The Air Force Academy Chapel

When we entered Colorado, we stopped at the first Visitor's information center. The helpful volunteer suggested various ideas for a visit to Colorado Springs. Among other suggestions, he said, "I think the Air Force Academy is getting a little less paranoid and is letting visitors in again, too." This was good news since I have always admired and been fascinated by the architecture of the Cadet Chapel there.

As we drove south from Denver toward Colorado Springs on Tuesday, Interstate 25 smoothed out as the road entered El Paso County and became "Ronald Reagan Highway." We turned at the entrance to the Air Force Academy, were appropriately inspected (trunk included) and headed up the hill. Soon the Academy buildings with chapel spires in the background were visible.


We pulled up to the Barry Goldwater Visitor Center.


Inside, there was a theater with a 15-minute film about cadet life. Exhibits show a lot of information about the cadets and their training. There is one from Ely, Minnesota. There is also plenty of information about the Chapel including architectural drawings:


And there are photos from the construction project:


It is about a quarter-mile walk from the Visitor Center to the chapel. You get good views from the side:



And, of course, a head-on shot is interesting too:


I don't believe I had ever seen the interior before this. It has an interesting blue glow from the windows. The space also has a much more "squared off" feel on the inside although you might not guess that from the angle of this picture.
'

Downtown Denver

Monday's rain was intermittent so we did have an opportunity to walk around outside and see a few buildings. Our first stop, of course was the Capitol.


Denver has a beautiful mall with the Capitol building on one end and the City-County government center on the opposite end. There are a variety of other public building fronting on the mall and nearby you will find the museums and library.


The City-County building is particularly attractive.


Only a couple of blocks away, you will also find the Denver Mint. We didn't have time to arrange a tour.

Allen True Murals

Monday was another rainy day on the trip. We decided to try some indoor activities to pass the day in Denver. After a brief tour of the Capitol building, we headed over to the Denver Historical Museum. This is a well known museum of the old west with a very good research facility.


We discovered that the History Museum, along with the Denver Library and the Denver Art Museum had just opened an Allen True Exhibit. At this point, we had no idea who Allen True was. We quickly learned that True was a muralist who specialized in "old west" scenes and that his work is preserved in dozens of buildings in western states.


The exhibit at the History Museum displayed several of his preliminary works, done on a moderate scale before the final murals were painted. I liked the two works prepared for the city/county government center just a few blocks away.


After lunch, we walked into the government center after a very thorough security check and found the two rooms that hold the actual murals. One is in the very quiet office of the Clerk of Probate Court, the other in the much busier Clerk of Criminal Court. The staff in both rooms allowed me to photograph the murals.


There is a nice plaque placed beside the mural in the Criminal Court Clerk's office that tells a bit more about True. Note the spelling of his name on the plaque versus in the exhibit.


The Exhibit had just opened on the day we left Minnesota. A brochure describes a walking tour of a number of True murals in downtown Denver.

Rules for Buying Gasoline

As others have noted, gasoline is the only commodity whose price everyone can quote. Probably because it is the only commodity with prices posted on large signs every mile or two along most major metropolitan streets!

I offer here my three basic rules for buying gasoline:

1. Never buy gasoline in Gorda, California. This is a delightful town, isolated on California Highway 1 near Big Sur. It is the site of most news stories with the theme,"Look how high prices have become for gas in California!" Does anyone ever fill their tank in Gorda?
   
   
2. Never buy gasoline near a national park. I don't think this one needs any explanation.
   
   
3. Always wait until you reach Wyoming to buy gas. Just check this map for current comparisons.

So how did that rule work out on this trip? I offer the following prices for your review:
Bloomington, MN -- $2.35
Council Bluff, IA --- $2.18
Ogallala, NE -------- $2.54
Gering, NE ---------- $2.59
Cheyenne, WY ------ $2.16
Denver, CO ---------- $2.35

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Our trip through Wyoming was brief. We had left Chimney Rock and were headed toward Denver where we would be staying with old friends. But, we wanted to see the Cheyenne area and photograph the Wyoming State Capitol. While we were passing through, perhaps we would find a few other places to stop.

As soon as we had left Chimney Rock, we encountered rain, fog and chilly weather. Temperatures were running around 37 to 40. Two of the three days on the trip have been terrible for sightseeing as we have had almost constant light to moderate rain throughout the day.

We got a bit of break in the weather when we reached Cheyenne and were able to photograph the capitol building.


The drive around town proved interesting with a nicely renovated downtown and some interesting looking B&Bs and at least one old hotel. There are a number of "Western Boots" to be found on the streets downtown. Here is one near the old train depot:


As we left Cheyenne and headed south for the hundred mile trip to Denver, signs warned of dense fog. They weren't kidding. We drove about twenty of those miles through fog as dense as you can encounter and still dare to drive. Find a vehicle with bright taillights, stay just within site and hold on tight!

We made it to Denver and found the temperatures up near 60 and no rain.

Chimney Rock, Nebraska

Our major destination in western Nebraska was Chimney Rock, near Scottsbluff. Since it had been too dark to see the rock the previous night, we set out from Scottsbluff in the morning, heading east on highway 92 which parallels U.S. 26. We had to cover about twenty miles to find the rock, located just south of 92 near Bayard.

Soon we saw Chimney Rock in the distance, just as the pioneers had seen it in the 1850s. The Nebraska Historical Society owns the eighty acres surrounding the rock and operates a visitors center.


Stop in at the Visitor's center and watch the fifteen minute film describing the trip west by wagon along the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. All three trails passed by this point along the Platte River. There are a number of exhibits that show images of the rock at earlier times as captured by photographers, artists and diarists.


The bookstore has a large collection of trail diaries. Now that is what I call a specialty bookstore.
The roadside sign tells the story better than I can:

Down at the Packard Dealer - Scottsbluff, Nebraska

After visiting Carhenge, we had one more planned stop on the Nebraska leg of our trip. But since it had turned into nighttime, we drove the twenty-five miles south from Alliance back to the North Platte river and the route of the Oregon Trail. We drove another twenty-five miles west into Scottsbluff, Nebraska to spend the night.

The next morning, we would backtrack about twenty miles to the East to see Chimney Rock. But as we headed out of Scottsbluff, we found ourselves driving down Overland when suddenly I noticed a sign for Studebaker Lark service. Like many Studebaker dealers I recall from my youth, this one was combined with a Packard dealership.


We swung around the block for a closer look. Sure enough, it was a Packard dealer - appropriately named, Orphan Motors.


And ready for the eager customers, inside sat a very shiny new 1946 Packard Deluxe Clipper.


Orphan Motors even had a "window sticker" on the car. List price: $1746. I'll just bet that you have to offer something over sticker to buy this baby with 2009 dollars!


What a delightful start to the morning.

Moon Over Carhenge

Carhenge was high on my list of sites to see in Nebraska. While Stonehenge in England leaves you with a lot of questions - who built it? - how did they get those stones up there?, Carhenge leaves little mystery.



We were lucky enough to arrive just after sunset with a nearly-full moon having risen above the 38 artfully placed cars.



Another part of this "car-art" exhibit may be even more photographed. The moon adds a bit of an eerie atmosphere to this scene.



Carhenge is about 50 miles north of Interstate-80, located at Alliance, Nebraska. Admission is free. Don't worry about arriving late, the parking lot is open until 10 p.m.
You can even wander out into the exhibit at night.



The actual location is about three miles north of Alliance on 87 which is two miles east of U.S. 385. Signs advertising Carhenge could easily mislead you to into looking for it on 385. Just look for this sign:

The Kool-Aid Museum, Hastings, Nebraska

Hey kids! Did you know that there is a Kool-Aid museum?

It's not a whole museum of its own like the Spam Museum, just a major exhibit in the Museum of Natural History and Culture in Hastings, Nebraska. Just follow this link to Roadside America for more details.



Having worked at a major food company (Pillsbury) for fourteen years, I was fascinated by the story of Edwin Perkins, owner of a general store in Hastings and his development of the Kool-Aid brand. R&D, brand management and sales promotion all at the kitchen table. Here is a replica of Perkins store.



You could come close to getting an MBA degree with a slow tour of this exhibit. Perkins did amazing things with his concept. When it comes to thinking outside the box to promote a food product, nothing much is going to beat this:



And after all, when we think of examples of small business, the first thing to come to mind is the Kool-Aid stand:



Highly recommended. Just about ten miles south of Interstate 80 and sixty miles west of the state capital in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The Day the Music Died

We have just left Minnesota on a trip to Colorado and Utah. It is a rainy Friday morning, October 2, 2009. The satellite radio is tuned to the '50s station and we are cruising south on Interstate 35 toward the Iowa border as Buddy Holley and the Crickets are playing.

"Hey!, we've never stopped at Clear Lake, to visit the site of the crash in 1959," I think. Let's check it out.

It's easy to recognize the Iowa boarder. The visitor center is in the shape of a barn.


Even the casinos here look like a barn with a machine shed.



The helpful man at the visitor center gives me directions to the memorial at the Clear Lake crash site. He warned us that "it's pretty muddy today out in the field."

I remember the day in February, 1959 when I learned about the accident. I was in the eighth grade. A classmate, Bill Dibellis (spelling?) had heard about it - perhaps he had a "transistor" with him, perhaps he heard it about it before leaving home. He lived close to school. This was a sad day for many of us.



We found the site. It is a few mile north of Clear Lake on a gravel road at the corner of 315th and Gull. You could easily pass by without noticing it except for those glasses.

From the glasses marker it's a half mile walk along the fence line to the crash site memorial.




It is smaller than you might expect.


People leave memorabilia. This hat tells it all for those of us old enough to remember.


And let's not forget the pilot who lost his life that day too.

Menahga Minnesota

I'm a relative newcomer to Minnesota, having moved here just 42 years ago. (Minnesotans are well known for taking time to accept strangers!) Back in the late 1960's I soon discovered The "Good Morning Show" on WCCO-AM. 'CCO still had about a 50% share of the audience at that time (No, that is not a misprint!)

Every March 16th, hosts Boone and Erickson would tell the "ancient story of how St. Urho drove the grasshoppers out of Finland." I was not a believer. St. Patrick and snakes in Ireland, maybe, but St. Urho and the grasshoppers? Surely, a myth!

Now, as I pulled into Menahga, Minnesota, I noticed a large statue and commemorative plaque set in a carefully landscaped park. What's this? I pulled around behind the statue and walked up to have a look at this neat little monument.

Well, here he is! St. Urho complete with a grasshopper impaled upon his trident.


The story is recorded in bronze.


And for more details, there is a full museum.


Moral to the story? Don't be a skeptic when you hear the locals describing their cultural background. This monument even rates an entry on the marvelous Roadside America site.

North From Sauk Centre

After breakfast and a walk around Sauk Centre, it was time to head north toward Bemidji and The Lost 40.

While Sauk Centre shows us main street in small town America, highway 71 shows us agricultural America in some unique ways. While you see the conventional fields of corn and grain, the things that really catch your eye are the sunflowers and gladiolas.

This field of sunflowers appeared a bit sad and pessimistic.


While this one was full of vigor and optimism.


But this field of Gladiolas got me to backtrack a bit and stop.


The towns that I passed through included Round Prairie, Long Prairie, Eagle Bend and Wadena. Several had beautiful churches. This area was, in large part, settled by Polish immigrants in addition to the usual Scandanavian and German mix found in much of Minnesota. The Polish left their mark in the form of large Catholic churches such as this one at Browerville.


Founded originally as St. Joseph's it was combined with St. Peter's , a German parish also of Browerville, and given the neutral name, Christ the King.