Garmon’s Tales

Earlier this month, I had a work assignment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yes, the Land of Cheese. (It’s the Land of Beer, too, but let’s stick with cheese.) I was there for two weeks. I flew out on Sunday, in order to start first thing on Monday morning. I flew through Chicago, which was sort of odd, because the following flight was less than 70 miles. It seemed like a lot of effort for such a short distance.


The layover was only 50 minutes, and I had quite a ways to go between gates, so I had to move quickly, no time to lollygag (yes, I used ‘lollygag’ in a sentence!)

As the plane approached Milwaukee, it turned and headed out over Lake Michigan. Soon it banked over the lake, and returned back towards the shore. As we dropped lower and lower, I couldn’t help thinking about the plane that recently landed in the Hudson River. The lake looked soooo cold!

After we landed, I passed through the nice new airport, and then walked out into the COLD WIND to the parking garage, where I picked up my rental car (a Subaru Impreza with not one, not two, not three, but FIVE keys on the keyring.) As I headed out towards Brookfield, I realized that I had forgotten to load the maps onto my GPS, so I used the map on my iPhone to find my way.

It was late afternoon as I drove past downtown Milwaukee. It thought it was an attractive town, with many old industrial buildings and large churches. Brookfield is about 15 minutes or so west of the city. At the hotel, I was given a room over on the side of the building, near a side entrance. This was handy; it also meant that I never passed through the main entrance during my entire stay.

That night, I went to the grocery store and bought some breakfast food for the week. I thought that it’d be a lot quicker to be able to just eat breakfast in the room, which gave me more time for my work.

The first morning, I was picked up at the hotel and given a ride to the company. The remaining days, I just drove myself.

Each day began to blur into the previous day; I got up about the same time, left the same time, and returned to the room each evening. I felt like I was living the life of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

The entire week was pretty cold. The second night it snowed several inches of a fluffy, powdery snow that reminded me of Alta. The other days I think it was too cold for snow. Since I worked indoors every day, in a room without any windows, the weather was largely irrelevant. It was dusk as I left each day, so I usually just went back to my room to prepare for the next day.

When Friday arrived, I was happy to climb in my car and drive past my hotel, onto the freeway and south to Chicago.

Halftime in Chicago
I drove down to Fry’s for a short visit, then drove back to the airport and picked up Jenny. We stayed in downtown, at the Millennium Knickerbocker hotel. We got a great price for the room on Hotwire, though we had to pay extra to park the car. We found a garage just across the street.

On Saturday, we walked down the Magnificent Mile to the Art Institute, located about a mile and half away. On the way, we stopped for breakfast at a great little European-Style cafe. We walked right past it once, because we were so distracted by looking at all of the great buildings.

Near our hotel was the historic Chicago Water Tower. For those who have traveled through this part of the country and are familiar with White Castle, the design of their restaurants are styled after this landmark.

A little further down the Magnificent Mile, we stopped to look at the Tribune Building. Embedded in the walls are stones and bricks from landmarks around the world. It is pretty cool.

We also stopped at the Apple Store (to get a replacement set of earbuds) and the Garmin Store (their attempt at replicating the Apple Store experience… it was pretty empty.)


The weather was unseasonably warm. We felt very fortunate. The temperature was in the high 50’s.

As we crossed the river, we looked down and saw that the ice in the river was breaking up, making neat patterns.

Nearing the Art Institute, we cut through a park; the city was having a winter festival. It seemed a little out of place because it was so balmy.

There is a real cool, huge piece of artwork in the park. The locals call it “the bean”. It’s a smooth stainless steel blob that reflects the sky. It arches up in the center, so you can walk underneath. It is really cool looking.

At the Art Institute, we discovered that admission was free during the entire month of February. That saved us $24! One of the well-known paintings we saw was George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884, which is in this scene in the movie Ferris Beueller’s Day Off:

We also saw a bunch of Monet’s some Van Gogh’s, some decorative architectural elements removed from buildings that were demolished, and many other cool stuff. I enjoyed it.

At the end of our visit, we came across an exhibit filled with miniature rooms. Some socialite had them created near the turn of the 20th century; many skilled artists were employed creating these perfectly detailed, accurate, tiny reproductions. We both thought that Claire would think they were really cool.

On the way back up the Magnificent Mile, we went inside one of the many shopping malls for a late lunch, and Jenny stopped in a couple more stores. We also went inside the American Girl Doll megastore, which was only a block or so from our hotel.

For dinner, we pulled out my iPhone and used it to find a restaurant near our hotel. We ended up at an awesome French Restaurant. Jenny had a variety of grilled vegetables (tasty!) and I had a French classic, grilled flatiron steak and pommes frites… with dijon mustard, of course (delicious!)

On Sunday morning, we relaxed, and slept in. Then we went down for breakfast. Following the advice of the concierge, we went to a great place called the Oak Tree, which is located on the sixth floor of the 900 Shops mall. Our seat had an amazing view down Michigan avenue, which we enjoyed as we ate our pecan waffles.

As soon as we got back to the room, it was time to check out. We loaded the car, and on the way out of town, we stopped to take photos of a massive McDonalds that took up an entire city block.

On the way to the airport, we headed south to a Polish section of the city. I really wanted to try and buy some Polish Oscypek, which is a cylindrical, smoked cheese found only in the Tatra montains of southern Poland. We had had some there, and I just loved it.


On Friday, before leaving Brookfield, I called several delis. I learned that oscypek is carried only seasonally, and this wasn’t the ’season’. However, a deli named ‘Gilmart’ had three left, according to the guy on the phone. We drove out and found it, in an industrial-looking suburban area near the Marie Curie High School. Most of the signs along the streets were written in Polish. We went inside Gilmart and the place was hopping. Over in the corner was a deli, where you could eat your favorite Polish items on the spot. Most of the people were speaking polish, and even the cashiers spoke to us first in Polish before converting to English. Unfortunately, while they seemed to understand what I was asking for, no one thought they had any.

Defeated, we returned to the car with some other polish chips, cookies and treats, and drove to the Airport. I dropped Jenny off at the curb, then drove back north towards Milwaukee.

About 2/3 of the way there, I pulled off to eat at a place I had spotted on the way down, named the “Old Europe Roadside Cafe”, or something like that. I pulled in and got out of the car before I realized that it had gone out of business; all the cars were parked there for the attached sports bar. So, I headed back towards the freeway, and stopped at a huge grocery store for some granola, yogurt and other stuff for my groundhog day breakfasts.

The store, however, was so massive and sprawling, I realized it would take forever to find what I needed. So I gave up, went and put gas in my car, and succumbed to temptation, grabbing some Sliders at White Castle to eat on the way back to Brookfield.

When I reached Milwaukee, I looped past the city again for another peek, then returned to my hotel. I got a room across the hall from the room I had the first week. It was a little surreal, because the room layout was a mirror image of the first one. That threw me off several times. I worked into the evening, then began:

Groundhog Day - Wisconsin Week 2

The second week of work was much like the first, so I’ll just mention a couple of the interesting places where I had lunch:

Marty’s Pizza is a local favorite, just across from my hotel. I noticed it the first week, and thought it looked like a real nasty dive; the second week, I went there for lunch and discovered it actually wasn’t bad.

I don’t think the place had been remodeled since it was built, which was probably in the 70’s. Their specialty is rectangular pizzas; the standard width was 18″, and you could get them as much as 6 feet long. (Sounds like the oven they run the pizzas through is an 18-inch wide, belt-driven unit!)

Instead of a pizza, I went with a toasted sandwich, which came with fries. The sandwich was great.

Another place I visited was Kopp’s Frozen Custard. A friend of mine suggested this place, since it was just 1 mile down the road, I give it a try.

They have a two different special flavors every day. Lucky for me, on the day I went, one of the them was Peanut Butter Kiss: Peanut butter custard made with Hershey’s® chocolate chips and swirls of peanut butter. You know what I got!

Finally, another place I visited is named Brennan’s Market. Their tagline is “Fruit, Cheese, Spirits, Bakery”. I bought a bunch of different types of cheese there, some award-winning. Stay tuned for some reviews!

The night before I left, I went to dinner at a place called the Bonefish Grill. It was good. I had a caesar salad, and some Mahi Mahi. I rarely have dessert when I eat out, but since I was nearly done with this assignment, I treated myself to a Crème Brulé. Unfortunately, it was a disappointment. It tasted kind of like grocery-store flan. I don’t mind flan, but that wasn’t what I expected.


While looking at the menu, however, I noticed that they served Snake River Rainbow Trout. Mmmm.. that reminded me of fishing the Teton with my bro’ Kim.

On Friday at 4:00pm, I put away my laptop, climbed back into the rental car, and drove to the airport to head home. I flew on Frontier this time, the flight was uneventful, save for my first layover in Denver’s newish airport (I haven’t landed in Denver since the days of nasty ol’ Stapleton Airport). From there, it was a quick hop and I landed back in Salt Lake, pretty much on schedule.

Since returning home, we’ve been working on my assortment of cheeses. Watch for Claire’s and my Cheese Review, coming soon!

Guess what happens today? At 4:31:30PM MST this afternoon it will officially be 1234567890 Unix time.

Unix time, used by all unix-based computers (including Mac OS X, don’t know about Windows), started at zero and has been counting seconds since the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1970 (not counting leap seconds.)

Watch your watch this afternoon, and enjoy that one glorious second of sequential bliss — to paraphrase The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, 1234567891, party over, oops, out of time.

If you’re busy this afternoon, and miss the moment, then set your alarm for December 22, 2282 at 1:13:30PM MST for the festivities of 9876543210.

One more story about Indiana, then we’ll move on to other topics.

Soon after I got back from my recent trip, I was talking to Randy about Clifty and the Ashcraft Chapel. He mentioned to me that there was going to be a freeway put through the area, the NAFTA highway. I didn’t believe it. After all, why do we need another highway for NAFTA? Aren’t the current freeways good enough?


Well, it turns out that he was right. This freeway, named I-69, will run from Laredo, Texas to Port Huron, Michigan, passing through southwest Indiana. What’s especially ironic is the fact that when the freeway is completed, a trip between these two points will be about 90 miles LONGER than if you use already existing freeways.

I came across this map of the area southwest of Bloomington. As I looked at it, it appeared that the freeway wouldn’t be passing by the Ashcraft Chapel or Clifty, so our family landmarks would be OK.


Last Friday, I started thinking about this again. I decided to do some more research and see if I could find some highway department maps showing the alignment through this area. After looking around for about a half hour, I was successful.

If you look at this map, the circles mark the Ashcraft Chapel (left) and Clifty (right).


Compare to this map, which is part of the map from the highway department showing the freeway’s alignment. The circles mark the Ashcraft Chapel (left) and Clifty (right).


As you see, the freeway corridor passes directly across both sites. This saddens me. Even if both sites aren’t taken out by the freeway, it will at the least pass directly adjacent to them. Gone will be the pastoral peace you encounter when you visit here. The woods will be replaced by a roaring highway.

It’s possible these sites will be spared. The freeway doesn’t take up the entire corridor, and I noticed that the cemetery adjacent to the Ashcraft chapel is noted on the highway alignment map.

It’s unclear how long it will be before this freeway comes through the area. It could be as many as 10 years away, but could be less. If you want to see these sites one last time before it comes through, don’t wait too long.

Here are a couple of larger versions of these maps:
Satellite Photo (Google Maps, 3.1MB)
Highway Alignment (3.3 MB)

So if you want to see these places, you’d better be planning a trip soon!

I added an extra day to my trip to Indiana in order to spend time visiting Greene county, where my grandfather V.G. Ashcraft was born.

(Note: See more, better-looking photos here.)

I was going to sleep in, because I was expecting a heavy layer of ice. I wanted it to melt off before heading out. However, I got up earlier than I had planned; I looked out the window, and saw that it was raining fairly hard, which was both a good sign: There wouldn’t be any ice, but everything was going to be muddy. Since I didn’t need to wait for the ice to melt, I went ahead and showered and packed my things. Next, I ran over to Office Depot as soon as they opened at 8 am to get a roll of tape; I needed it to close the box I of sweatshirts was bringing with me. After some breakfast, I loaded the car, checked out and headed south just after 9.

First, I headed towards the northern end of Greene county. I set my GPS to direct me to the Tulip Trestle, an old railroad trestle built over 100 years ago. (It’s also called the Greene County Viaduct, but I think Tulip Trestle is more attractive name.) After leaving the main road, I headed down a pretty country lane; it had been paved many years ago, but it was worn and bumpy from years of re-patching. I wound between quiet farmhouses, empty fields, and groves of bare trees.

The road turned to the left, leading me down into a small river valley; in the bottom, I crossed a bridge over a small stream. The GPS told me to turn right onto a dirt road. It was in pretty good condition, made of crushed limestone and dirt. By this time, the rain had stopped, but the road was a muddy. I got out to take some photos, and saw that the rental car was coated with mud. (Good thing I didn’t have to clean it!)

A mile or so down the road, I saw the trestle up ahead in the distance. I stopped and took some photos, then drove on, stopping when I reached the place where the road wound around one of the trestle’s support towers.  It was a quiet country morning. I was the only one there. A solitary dog wandered past. I called out to it. It glanced over at me and continued on its way, minding its own business.

 

I hadn’t planned on climbing up to the top of the trestle, but I looked over at the hill, and there was a trail, and it didn’t look too muddy, so…

It was a steep trail, but I quickly reached the top, and looked out across the trestle. It’s pretty cool. I took some photos, and walked out onto the trestle for a few steps. I considered walking across to the other side, but dismissed the idea since I needed to get going (and there are no guardrails!)

 

The climb down was a little dicier than the climb up. The wet ground was covered buy wet leaves. They made the climb easier, but on the way down they tended to slip a little bit.

Once I got back down, I took a few more pictures, then climbed in the car and continued on my way. I considered returning the way I came, but then decided to continue on in the same direction; it turns out that the trestle is a lot closer to the paved road when you come from the north; in fact, it’s right around the corner.

Back on the road, I continued heading west. My next stop was near Linton. To reach Linton, I passed through Bloomfield, the county seat of Greene county.  As I reached Bloomfield, I passed a cemetery. I looked over as it went by, and thought to myself, “I wonder if there are any Ashcrafts buried there…”. At that very instant, I spotted a large headstone right next to the road, with the name “ASHCRAFT” on it. I laughed, and pulled over.

I got out and took some pictures, then got back into the car and drove through the cemetery. I saw another headphone with the Strauser name on it. Leaving the cemetery, I headed on down the road, and turned right when I reached the town square in the middle of town. I passed the county courthouse and continued west towards Linton.

Linton is one of the larger towns in this rural county; it even has a Wal*Mart supercenter. North of it is an area of wetlands; a road winds aroun between tree-covered hills and ponds. On the far side of this area stands a monument, which marks the point that was designated the population center for the US from 1930-1940. I stopped and took a few photos, then turned back, heading back towards Bloomfield.

On the way back through Bloomfield, I passed back through Switz City. I hadn’t noticed them on the way out, but this time I noticed there were clusters of white pipes sticking out of the ground in every direction. I had seen some large fuel tanks, so I wonder if there are some sort of wells around here; either oil or natural gas?


When I came back to Bloomfield, I stopped in the center of town and took some pictures around the county courthouse. When I drove around the back side of it to see what the back side looks like, I discovered a giant hi-lift jack standing in a parking lot. I got out of the car and looked at it, and realized that this was the factory for Hi-Lift jacks. Cool! As I drove back to the main road, I saw that the factory was spread across several city blocks, right in the middle of town.




I kept heading east, then south and soon reached Clifty. I got out, and took a bunch of photos. I climbed up on the hill, among the trees that were bare. I noticed lots of acorns on the ground; the leaves were a mix of Oak and Maple.


I went to the door, and since it wasn’t locked, I went inside. The interior had a musty, damp smell that reminded me of a French Cathedral. Those of you who have been there are familiar with the rows of benches, the two stoves, and the pulpit in the front. I imagined what it would have been like to go to church in this building.


Back outside, I checked out the hand pump. I worked the handle for awhile, but no water came out.


I got back in my rental car, and noticed that the carpet on the floor was covered with mud from my feet, from all the muddy places they had been.

I kept driving down the road, turning right once, then twice, and soon reached the Ashcraft Chapel. The road in front of the chapel is pretty narrow, so I pulled off the road a little ways past the chapel.


The door of the chapel was held shut with some orange twine, I untied the knot and went inside. The chapel is in pretty rough shape; the roof has been leaking, and the ceiling material has fallen in the center, leaving a gaping hole. The water that has made its way inside has made the floor sag severely in the center along the north wall. It’s kind of sad.


Outside, I went out back into the cemetery; I took photos of all the Ashcraft headstones I could find. In the far, upper corner of the cemetery is a new, modern headstone, made of some black material and laser etched with the photographs of a couple. The husband died and was buried here in the last year.


I wandered back down through the cemetery, through the gate, and back to the car. Before I left, I parked the car in the middle of the road, and threw my bag on the hood again to support my camera for some more timed photos. I tried to be quick, in case some traffic came past, but really didn’t need to. The whole time I was there, not a single car went by.

When I got back in the car, I put downtown Bloomington in the GPS and let it guide me back; I went back past Clifty, then eventually reached Bloomington, this time coming into the city from the south. I wondered if I came in a different way if I’d see any subdivisions of newer homes, but there weren’t any.


I stopped again at Steve & Barry’s, and grabbed a couple more shirts (for myself; I hadn’t bought any for myself when I was there the other night), then walked over to Indiana University to take some photos.






On the way out of Bloomington, I drove by the business where I had done my training, took some photos, then headed back to Indianapolis on the main road.


As I reached the Indianapolis freeway that circles the city, I pulled into a Waffle House for a quick bite to eat. It was mid-afternoon, so the place was deserted, the service was quick, the Pecan Waffle & Hash Browns (scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, diced, peppered) were awesome.

If I had time, I was originally planning to drive north of Indianapolis to Fry’s and maybe the Apple Store, but as it turned out I had used up pretty much the entire day, so I drove straight back to the airport. I returned the rental car, taped up my box, and went inside.

I looked for a curbside checkin for my box, but learned that US Airways doesn’t have one. So I had to wait in the regular line, even though I had my boarding pass. Soon, an agent came by asking who was headed to Phoenix. Since I was, I was expedited to the front of the line.


When I got to the security checkpoint, I pulled out my Passport Card (I got it for my bike trip to Rosarito). The TSA agent looked it over carefully, and refused to accept it. I was stunned. She called another agent over, and he agreed. So, I hunted around in my bag and found my Utah Driver’s license. How bizarre. They won’t accept an ID card issued by the US Government, but they will accept a card that certifies me as a driver by a state. After going through the metal scanner, I asked the TSA officers there if they’d seen a Passport Card. They hadn’t so I pulled it out and showed it to them, adding that “she wouldn’t accept this as ID”. They both agreed that she was an idiot. (I’ve since checked the TSA web site, and yes, the Passport Card is valid ID. It’s scary that the TSA officers don’t even have the most basic training for their job.)


The flight for Phoenix left on time, but arrived late because of a headwind. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I grabbed some dinner, an AWESOME blue burrito. We boarded the plane to Salt Lake, but sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes because the weather in Salt Lake was holding back traffic.

Once I got to Salt Lake, I brushed all the snow off my car, and drove home, getting in bed around 3 am. I had been up for 22 hours.

(Final Note: Looking back at these photos, It looks like I over-sharpened them in post-processing. Oops. You can see the unsharpened photos here.)