Michigan trip
9-28-08

I was cleaning out the storage shed and needed to get all the bikes out of my way so I brought the whole pack of dogs up to the south side of the new dog house.

I finally moved into the doghouse. My dads wood carving chair, possum belly table that I have used in my cabins since Goldfield Nevada days, Charlie’s chair he just gave me with a nice sheep skin Sheila gave me, Cactus Jacks painting of me and the Pod/bike, John Foster’s rocking chair, and out front is the little stool Dixie gave me that she used to train dogs on. I trained a few dogs to do tricks on it myself.

The weather looked good for a ride back east to visit so I loaded up the big ol’ yellow dog and headed out across South Dakota on Hwy 12. What a wonderful road that is. It is mostly straight but runs through some really good farm country. The road is mostly two lane, in good shape, and mostly fast travel. The wheat harvest was in and I saw several of these piles of wheat that they were unable to get in storage so they pile it on the ground.

The wind does blow and from some of these sort of things that happened I guess they had a major storm that came through.

I stopped in Aberdeen, SD and bought a new camera as one more of my little old Ebay cameras bit the dust. I had this store clerk help me put in the chip and get the dang thing ready to shoot. This is the first ‘test’ shot, and it worked, so I bought it….

I went out and took a shot of the sort of trashy looking yellow dog. We have been a long way together and still have a long way to go……

This is almost like the panel truck I sold to Kenny down in Silver Peak.

The hurricane Gustov put on some speed and these clouds are some of the front runners I was heading into. I decided to head north to the upper peninsula of Michigan to visit my brother Dan and his wife Bette until the storm passed.

After leaving the farming lands of South Dakota and Minnesota and get into the wilds of Wisconsin and the UP the damn tees take over everything. I stopped and rode around this logging dealers yard. They cut up the trees in short lengths mostly I think for pulp purposes. I thought this rig was interesting as it is made for the soft ground.

Not sure what this is all about.

I think this grabs a little tree and cuts it off at the base and they runs it through, trimming off the limbs.

It just keeps getting worse and worse as I went north and east. Too much green and the focal length of my eyes so constricted.

This is a view of the lift bridge that separates Houghton from Hancock. I took this photo from across the street from my brother’s house. There is a barge with the crane coming through.

I stopped and looked around this town, looking for some of those girls I have heard about, but none were out in their yards. Darn….

A metal artist had a nice display outside of his shop along the highway.

He had his motorcycle locked up so nobody would take it for a ride.

The famous bridge to get down to lower Michigan. The UP guys say that Trolls live under the bridge (lower Mich.) I started out in the left lane here but quickly moved over to the paved right lane. The left lane is some sort of metal grate and it is really scary on a motorcycle.

I spent the night in this old hotel established in 1880 the sign said. The rooms in this old hotel were about 8’x10’ and they had remodeled the place and made three rooms into one. One room for the bed, one for two chairs and a TV and the other for a sink, toilet and very small metal shower. It was supposed to have wifi but I could never get my laptop to connect and work. I think the old ghosts were active in keeping their home safe from new fangled things.

I made it to Sheila’s place and the weather was perfect so we took a ride.

We went to the Gilmore Car collection which was about 30 miles away from her place. As you come in the door this old Harley was there to greet me….

This woman and her dog took off on a Harley and side car and rode across the country. She was the first woman to do so. The dog doesn’t look very amused in this photo.

One of the guys that was working there said that this was the most expensive car in the collection. It was bought and put in a garage under a house in Germany in 1936. The guy then bricked up the garage door and filled in the ramp down to it with dirt and planted over it to hid the fact that there was anything there. It was kept there after the war when Russia controlled things and was only brought out after the wall came down and Germany was reunited.

There weren’t many motorcyels.

I have to put this one in here for my friend Tucker…… ….

Bantam

A very nice road rig.

They had a few little ones too.

I think there were five of these barns that they moved here and restored to house the car collection.

Ya know Johnson outboard motors? Well they got started making bicycle engines and then switched to outboards. This little engine has two cylinders and looks like a really nice system. If you look closely you can see some sort of triangle spring system that must have taken the torque stress out of the wheel spokes. I have never seen that in the new motorized bike setups.

One of the first motorized buggy’s. It must have been a really rough ride but they said it was made for the rough buggy roads at the time.

I really like this airhead motor with the fan for cooling.

Kalamazoo is where the Checker Car and cab company was located. Here is the progression of the cabs that they built.

We went into the mussel car barn.

This little old diner was restored and moved on the grounds. We went on in and had some lunch. I even had a piece of blue berry pie, home made by the gals that run it.

Restored Shell station.

We went over to the main shop and found the mechanic just starting work on fixing a tire. We asked to look around the shop and he said it would be ok. I said that this little car must be a lot of fun to drive. He said it was a blast but you had to keep going fast because it didn’t have a water pump for the radiator. “No Problem” I could keep it going fast….

He was also working on this huge Rolls Royce. He said that the Rolls were a piece of shit. Why? Lucas electric ingnition. Same old story with all the English producs four wheel and two wheel.

I will have to say that the carburator was magnificent.

Sheila on her R60/2 as we came down to the last barn we visited. She is really doing well on the bike and the yellow dog had to pay attention or she would leave me behind. This bike is one she owned many years ago (not saying how many J) but had sold it to her brother. Jeff gave it back to her last year and it has taken a while to get it back on the road after years of storage.

The last barn was the 50’s 60’s one and it sure made me smile a lot.

Very cool Red Rider pedal cars.

The county fair was happening while I was there.

It was a really good look at what is possible to grow there.

They do OK on home grown tomatoes. Sheila had a late planting of corn which was just getting ripe while I wsa there and we ate corn amost every meal. Even for breakfast we had corn fritters…. Yumm, yumm….

This China bike motor sure lacks when put up against that Johnson bike motor doesn’t it?

They have a living history set at the fair.

This gal was demonstrating chair caneing.

I asked several guys about this rig. Not sure if it is for snow or wet boggy ground but I guess it would work on both.

this is an unusual lawn mower with a horizontal motor running a vertical shaft mower blade. It sure doesn’t look very well balanced. If you look in the back there is a push type sickle mower. They had some really cool old time stuff here.

they only made two of these cars. The neat thing about it is that the body lifts up so you can get to the workings of the car. Didn’t catch on….

I had to take a picture of this for Keith Blount. It is an all wooden, hand operated, rail car.

We made it out to the animal barns. They really had  a nice display. The local fair here in Custer County had maybe ten chickens and half a dozen rabbits.

There were lots of mules and big draft horses. They have pulling contests which I bet are fun to watch. These dudes are serious about pulling.

Ahh, the night life…..

This is what Sheila has to deal with every day around her place. I got really ‘closed in’ feelings here.

I made a batch of bread while at Sheila’s. I couldn’t find but one little bread pan which I used for a loaf of dried cherry/ nut bread. The other loaf I baked in a cast iron Dutch oven which came out very well. 

these trees are almost like a fence.

On the way home I stopped at this little museum to take a look at this boat that they had along the highway. The sign out front said something like you will regret it if you don’t stop and come in and look around. Well, what can you do then but come in and look around? The old guy that runs the place just almost took me by the hand and led me around the place and told me about everything. Back in the early days this was a major vacation retreat.

He said that there were thirty of these lodges that people from all over came to vacation. I forget how many of these boats that they had but maybe 20 or so that ferried the people around the lake. He said that now with cars and TV people don’t come here anymore. It is a huge lake

They did have lots of cool odd stuff.

Back out on the road I saw this crane for loading big granite blocks on rail cars. This area was and maybe still is a major source of building granite. The old guy said there were three quarries still in operation here.

Back in South Dakota I think this might be one of those ethanol fuel places. They grow a lot of soybeans and corn and I think they make fuel out of it here.

A pheasant farm. I liked how they planted corn for shade and feed for them.

Sun flowers now were head down and drying.

Petrified wood park.

I didn’t see but a few leaves that were turning until I got back into Montana. This nice little display in near Baker.

Getting’ thin. I packed the new tire all the way back and forth but never did get around to changing it. If I would have had a tire failure I could have changed it out on the road as I did carry my tire and air tools with me. I think this tire (Avon Gripster) has about 9,000 miles on it. I was able to get 12,000 miles out of an Avon Distanzia on my trip to SA.