Posted by: Crazy Horse in MyBlog on Aug 4, 2009
Our second day on the road was the start of the really eventful parts of the trip to Canada.
In fact, unlike our second trip to Canada in 2000, our return trip from the first trip was fairly uneventful.
Upon deciding on a motel and place to eat somewhere in northeastern Oklahoma, we discovered that I had left $4200.00 worth of Travelers Cheques laying on the dining room table at home in Fort Worth.
Lora had wisely put some money in her purse so we weren't without funds.
The friend that was staying at our house taking care of our pets, got the address of my friend in New York state, and the next morning mailed the funds to them.
We got up the next morning after a better nights rest than I thought it would be due to the missing funds and continued on our way.
Our first major stop was going to be in Springfield Missouri at Bass Pro Shops. This was before there were Bass Pro's everywhere, this was the Daddy of them all.
The reason we were stopping was two fold, one to see the place, the second, because I had ordered a Wayne Carlton Bear Call, but by the time I ordered it, they were not sure if it would get to me, before we left home on the trip.
I told them to hang on to it and I would stop in and pick it up on our way thru town.
We get to Springfield around lunch time, find Bass Pro, and find out that the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon is also at Bass Pro that day.
I have been in some crowded places in my life time, but that was in a class by itself.
We did have a fairly good time touring the store, then went next door to the big Taxidermy Museum, which was even more impressive than Bass Pro.
we finally got out of there and back on the road, headed for Springfield Illinois so we could tour Lincoln's Home.
It was around 4 or 5 when we finally got gone from Springfield Mo., and so an hour or so later, we stopped at a big road side rest area and decided to go ahead and fix supper while we still had some daylight left.
We got out our little grill and some mesquite wood we had brought along and set up and got ready to grill some steaks or something.
Soon after I got the fire to going in the grill, other folks that were there at the place started coming around where we were set up at and asking what kind of wood were we using.
I think we ended up giving a couple of folks a piece or two of the mesquite.
After getting supper cooked and everything re-packed and squared away, we drove on to Springfield Illinois and spent the night.
next morning we got up, ate a lite breakfast and went to Lincoln's Home in Springfield and went on one of the tours.
From there we walked over to the museum and toured it. The one thing Lora and I feel bad about to this day, is that we did not take time to go visit Lincoln's Tomb.
That was one of two things we missed on the trip that I wished we had not. The other was Niagra Falls.
We drove by within just a few miles and did not go, we have both regretted that.
parts of the trip are some what blurry, such as I do not recall some of the smaller towns or places where we spent the night on our way to Canada.
Our next major stop, two nights worth came when we reached New York state.
We would be staying at the home of Ed and Marion Dudley.
I had became aquainted with Ed while hunting elk in Colorado. He was one of Pudge's(Tom Cox, Meadows-Vega Guide Service, Collbran, Colorado) long time customer's and we had been a couple of camps together.
Ed and his wife owned a farm between the small towns of Cato and Meridian just west of Syracuse.
They had ran a dairy on their farm but when he decided to get out of the dairy business they became the water department for Cato and Meridian.
The wells on their farm were Artesian wells, so they went from selling milk to selling water. Ed and Marion were in their late 70's, and Marion had expressed some concern to Ed about being able to entertain my 34 year old wife and 16 year old daughter.
I would be hanging out with Ed and his and Marion's son Paul, while they were doing water deliveries in the area.
Right after we got to their house and got thru with the introductions and such, Marion asked Lora what she was interested in doing while we were there.
My wife is one of if not the most unique and eclectic person I have ever had the priveledge of meeting, let alone marrying.
All the time we had spent planning the trip and on the drive up, she had expressed an interest in seeing and finding out all she could about the Erie Canal.
As we were headed across UpState New York on I-95 I believe, we started seeing signs about the different "Ports" and "locks" that had been part of the Canal, especially the closer we got to Ed and Marion's.
The words "What would you like to do", had barely cleared Marion's mouth, whem Lora started in about wanting to find out and possibly visit some of the sites that had been part of the Canal.
When she said that, Ed went to grinning and Marion's face lit up like a 5 year old at Christmas.
It turned out, that Marion Dudley was head of the local historical society in that area, and she knew all sorts of stuff about the Canal.
One bit of back tracking I have to do right here, is that having gotten to know Ed fairly well during the previous 4 years or so, I knew he had a craving for vanilla ice cream.
Even though it was pretty soft by the time we got to there house, we took him two half gallons of BlueBell vanilla ice cream.
We sat around and visited and talked that first night, then the next morning we were all up and heade different directions by about 7 a.m..
The boys off to do water deliveries and the girls off to tour the Canal area.
At lunch, we all met back up, and after lunch I went with Paul on some more deliveries and Lora and Tina stayed at the house with Ed and Marion, and even go to go out with Ed to one of their corn fields and gather fresh sweet corn for supper.
In planting their fields, they would fill the planter so that the first 6 or so rows of corn on the outside of the field were sweet corn.
We really enjoyed their hospitality and told themm we would see them on their way back, as they had told us to stay with them on the way up and back, so we did.
We got up the next morning after a very eventful and fun day, and made our way back to the interstate and headed east again.
Many folks have the wrong impression of New York state. they hear the name and immediatelyh think of the city, and that is a dis service to a really neat, unique and beautiful part of our nation.
On that leg of the trip, we saw more deer and turkeys after we crossed the new york state line than the rest of the way there.
Somewhere I have a mapbook I put together for the trip, I took and figured out the route we would be going thru each state and cut that route from a map and put it in a loose leaf binder.
All I or Lora had to do was turn to the page for that state or particular day/leg of the trip.I do remember that we went from Albany New York over to Bennington Vermont.
We went thru New Hampshire and into Maine.
Our trip thru Maine was uneventful, but our next destination was one of the highlights of the trip and my life.
In the next installment, New Brunswick and Atlantic Salmon Fishing On The Miramachie.