Next we spent a few days with Mom in her home town of Rock Rapids, Iowa, then visited Lovriens at Lake Okoboji.  Then on Father’s Day we drove through several notable towns (to me at least), with my wonderful daughter Stephanie buying meals.  First, the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend… magnificent.  Then to Union Cemetery in Humboldt, where more Lovriens are buried than anywhere else.  Visited my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather’s graves for the 1st time.

We then headed into Cherokee, where I realized I should visit my aunt there but I had not called ahead.  She and her family were wonderfully accommodating and we had a nice visit.  Then to Quimby, my dad’s hometown, to visit my grandmother’s grave.  Then back to Omaha to spend the rest of the evening and the next day with my dad.

Be sure to click the photo above to view the full slideshow.икони

We started the day at the Pittsburgh Airport Hyatt – a really nice airport hotel. Once you exit security at the entrance to the baggage claim, you’re just a couple of indoor moving sidewalks away from the hotel entrance. We had a nice corner room with two large windows with a spectacular view… of, well, the parking lot, but still it was impressive with all the lights and window space.

In the morning we rented a car and took off into a thick fog. We had hoped to get a close-up look at downtown Pittsburgh but we couldn’t see 50 feet in front of us. We went through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, which was fairly impressive – right through a fairly large mountain – but not as long as tunnels in NY and Boston.

We headed toward Dayton, an Amish community. We drove in and out of heavy fog until we reached Kittanning, so we didn’t see a lot of the countryside. What we could see was hilly and winter-bare. Spring is almost here, but not quite. The fog finally lifted and we discovered beautiful valleys between the hills, dotted with picturesque farms. We stopped at one small cemetery, off an unpaved country road. There were graves of Civil War soldiers and a few who died as early as 1858. We got the rental car good and muddy up there.

We didn’t see any “Amish” in Dayton at first glance, so we programmed its sister town, Smicksburg, into the GPS Navigator. As we neared the town, we began seeing black Amish horse carts with their little orange caution decals on the back. At the crossroads was a furniture store called “Amish Country” where we saw some beautiful pieces – a Mission-style dining room set, a solid wood high chair and several other items caught our eye, but all we left with was a Christmas stocking and a bag of kettle corn.

From that point we decided to just wander a while. We turned off on a small country road and found ourselves behind another horse cart on a long stretch of “no passing” road. Being in no hurry we followed at 9 mph or less and enjoyed the scenery. Grace saw a creek bed filled with daffodils, and then she spotted a wild groundhog who popped up in a field near the car. We figured he must be related to Punxsutawney Phil, so we named him “Smicksburg Sam”.

We saw many quaint farms, but one house in particular caught our eye. A large, gorgeous stone house with a full-sized castle turret on it. Had to snap a photo of that one, and glad we did, as the story of that house would pop up later in the day in a most unexpected place!

We reached another intersection after a bit and programmed the GPS to take us to Punxatawney. As you approach town from the south you come down a steep hill that gives you an awesome vista view of the whole town. At the bottom of the hill is a special “runaway truck” lane filled with gravel berms and water barrels. We’d never seen one of those before. And at the very end of the lane past the last water barrels is (what the town map called) the largest groundhog statue in the world, which is really only a groundhog-shaped billboard. Why they would put a town landmark at the end of a in-case-of-disaster-only truck lane is puzzling yet amusing.

Being great fans of the movie “Groundhog Day,” we wandered around looking for familiar things and found none. (We learned later that very little of the movie was actually filmed in “Punxy” – as the locals call it.) We saw a sign that said “Groundhog Zoo” and pulled in to find it was part of the local library. Two groundhogs were housed there in an enclosure and we got an up-close view. We also ran into the town historian, who was perusing old newspapers from the 1860s, taking notes for a book on town activities back then. Then we told the librarians we were clueless tourists and asked  where we should visit in town. They gave us a map and sent us off to “Gobbers Knob” where the actual Feb. 2 festivities take place. It’s a big park with a big stage you may recognize – we took a few pics.

After we stopped at the “official” groundhog souvenir store for our usual Christmas ornament, we ate lunch at “Punxy Phil’s” diner, which was pretty good stuff. They served no groundhog to our knowledge, but they did have a quaint way of advertising for local businesses on every single thing within reading distance on the table: the placemats, the table tents, menus, coffee mugs, everywhere.

We decided to hit the road, but we didn’t know where to go next. The only other planned stop we had was Fallingwater, but it was too far away to reach before it closed at 5pm. So we pulled over at a motel and found they had wireless internet that we could access from the parking lot (this is called “war driving” and is kind of frowned upon but time was a-wasting). We searched a few central Pennsylvania tourist sites and found a town called Indiana where they had a Jimmy Stewart museum (it was his hometown). And we had time to get there before the closed, so off we went.

The Jimmy Stewart museum is on the 3rd floor of the library, and the attendant was already turning off the lights when we arrived a half-hour before closing. But she let us in and we started browsing the movie memorabilia. Lots of great stuff from “Harvey”, “It’s a Wonderful Life” and his other flicks. Then we turned a corner and found a whole wall about his ancestry and genealogy. And there, on the wall about halfway down, was a photo of that same “castle turret” house that we had stumbled on in the middle of nowhere, over 20 miles away, earlier that day! Amazing coincidence. Turns out that Stewart’s paternal grandfather (whom Jimmy was named for) had been born in that house, although the turret part wasn’t there back then. An engineer/inventor named McCormick added the turret many years later.

By the time we returned to the car it was close to 5:30 and we had no idea where we were staying for the night, so we fired up the GPS again and told it to search for hotels, sorted by distance. The first place it suggested looked like a real fleabag, so we went to #2 on the list, called “Brickhaven“, a bed and breakfast near the local college. It was really nice inside, recently remodeled in a very ornate Victorian style and we immediately knew it would work for us. But would it work for them? The lady who answered the door was on the phone with another guest, and we waited a bit only to have her tell us “we usually don’t take walk-ins.” But then she told us we looked like nice people and she showed us a nice room. $95/night, private bath, full breakfast and good conversation. Turns out her husband was Ed Long, who was once a character actor in TV westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza. He even appeared in an episode of the original Star Trek series! He told us that on the set of Rawhide one day, Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef invited him to come to Italy to film a western. He had a new baby and doubts about the potential success of the thing so he declined, thus missing out on the “spaghetti western” phenomenon that made Clint and Lee famous world-wide.

Earlier that afternoon we had passed by a community theater on the main drag advertising a play called “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” and thought it might make a nice evening. It was a goofy affair as you might expect, but every enjoyable.

Tomorrow we’re off in search of a masterpiece of architecture called “Fallingwater,” but who knows what else we’ll find?

Sunday morning we attended my cousin’s church, Church in the City, in Milwaukee.  A beautiful building and an excellent service.  Had a wonderful lunch afterwards with cousins and family before heading up to Manitowoc to visit the other side of the family.  Ended a leisurely Monday with a refreshing walk through the farm and woods.

We flew into Omaha and rented a nice Honda Odyssey van, picked up Dad & June and headed north; first to Sioux Falls and then straight west across the state to Deadwood.  Dad popped in a Roger Miller CD along the way and we enjoyed the music, especially his goofy-yet-philosophical “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd“.  Little did we know that not only would we hear the tune again playing in the streets of Deadwood, but that we’d actually be *in* a buffalo herd less than 24 hours later!

The next morning we started off early to do the 3 “must-dos” in the Black Hills: Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Custer State Park.  The carved mountains were every bit as impressive as we expected, but the real fun was the drive through Custer State Park.  Well, the first 80% of it was pretty boring actually – nice scenery but no wildlife whatsoever.   We saw a few donkeys and antelope but no prairie dogs, and we really were hoping for buffalo.  We were getting a little disillusioned when Dad said he could see some buffalo on a hill a long ways off.  But we couldn’t find a way to get closer and we were nearing the end of the wildlife loop through the park.  Finally, finally we found them.  Hundreds of them, on both sides of the road, many of them coming right up to the cars!  We could hear them grunting at each other, and even got video of a nursing calf head-butting his mother’s underside to get at the action.  

Leaving the park, the drive back towards Rushmore on 16-A was a real bonus – do not miss this when you visit!  Known as the Iron Mountain Road, the highway winds up a mountain with crazy hairpins and one-lane tunnels in the mountain rock.  The tunnels are strategically positioned to perfectly frame the Rushmore faces in the distance as you pass through.  At the top of the mountain is a beautiful scenic view of Rushmore (from above!) and the surrounding hills.

The next day we headed up to a nice lodge mountaintop lodge my Uncle Fred and Aunt Sharon rented to celebrate their 40th anniversary.  Lots of family turned up and we had a nice time.  Visited downtown Deadwood and saw a reenactment of the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok.

On the way back (diagonally across Nebraska) we stopped at Smith Falls State Park, home of the largest waterfall in Nebraska.  We expected something about 8 feet high… it is plains, after all.  But the falls are actually very impressive, nearly 70 feet high.  And if you ever find yourself lost in “the middle of nowhere,” look up and see if you might be in Ainsworth, Nebraska, which officially bills itself that way.  If you are, stop by the Ainsworth Golden Steer for an excellent steak dinner.  We did; food and service were awesome.  Could have done without the “free steak dinner” insurance sales presentation on the other side of the dining room, but somehow it seemed like the perfect ambience given the circumstances.

Then back to Omaha, where I had to have my requisite Runza as I do every visit to Nebraska.  Mmmm!