Bicycles, Board Games, Bridges, and Battlefields

Doug takes a pre-RAGBRAI photo of the rural midwest landscape. (All photos by authors.)

Bicycles

Our first stop after Texas was Iowa, where Doug and a 20-something family friend, Rachel, participated in RAGBRAI, Doug for the second time, Rachel for the first. RAGBRAI is the (Des Moines) Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, a 500-mile ride from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River. Doug rode his Tern Vektron e-bike, Rachel a rental road bike (not quite as comfortable as the fitted-to-her bike she decided not to transport from her home in New York). This summer's heat dome was in full power for six of the seven riding days, unfortunately, but Doug and Rachel rode every day's route except Friday afternoon, when the heat index hit 112. It was quite the achievement!

The traditional rear wheel dip into the Missouri River before the Ride.

Preparing for Day 5.

Doug and Rachel, looking chipper at the start of Day 1.

A crowded start to the day. An estimated 50,000 bicyclists participated in one or more days of the 50th annual RAGBRAI.

The crowds of bicyclists spread out on the route and in the lunch town, where they could visit foods trucks and local vendors and attractions.

Tent villages sprang up each afternoon, and disappeared the next morning, to be trucked to the next town.

When a storm rolled in on Friday night, tent campers took shelter wherever they could. In our area, they gathered in an underground parking garage for a few hours.

Ready for Day 7, the final day!

Doug and Rachel made it to the Mississippi River!

Board Games

From Iowa, we headed for Indiana, where Doug attended GenCon, the annual board game convention in Indianapolis, along with our daughter Madeline and her friend Oscar. Doug presented the latest version of his word-based board game, The Scribes Guild, for test players to give him feedback. He had presented an earlier version at the convention two years ago; Covid kept us away last year.

We stayed at a very well-appointed KOA Holiday campground with character, which had fancy sites and breakfast waffles delivered to your site, and also goats!

This site includes a stone firepit, barbecue grill, patio seating, hanging bench, hammock chairs, and a private dog pen. (We opted for a less fancy traditional site.)

Alison's breakfast "bubble" waffle, delivered to the rig.

Two goats just hanging out! (Not pictured: two horses were also stabled here.)

Bridges

Leaving Indiana, we continued east to Ohio, where we stayed near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This scenic area encompasses some 33,000 acres of the Cuyahoga River valley between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. We appreciated the wooded river views from our e-bikes and while on a Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad ride; enjoyed the music of the Cleveland Orchestra with Broadway singer Audra McDonald at the Park's Blossom amphitheater, and of the band Three Dog Night at the nearby MGM Northfield Casino; and learned about early settler and Civil War life at the Park's Hale Farm.

Towpath Trail bridge over the Cuyahoga River, near the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Peninsula Station and Lock 29 of the old Ohio & Erie Canal.

Algae-covered turtles on their own log "bridge" in a remnant of the Ohio & Erie Canal.

Next to the Cuyahoga River is the Ohio & Erie Canal, completed in 1832. It connected the Ohio River to southern Lake Erie, modeled on the earlier Erie Canal that linked eastern Lake Erie to the Hudson River. The Ohio & Erie Canal was built with 146 locks, each 90' long by 15' wide, and had to traverse the St. Lawrence Continental Divide (separating the Mississippi River watershed of the Ohio River from the Hudson Bay watershed of Lake Erie). But railroads out-competed canals beginning in the 1850's, and damage from the Flood of 1913 was the final blow. In many places, the Canal is now just an overgrown depression in the woods.

The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad train pulling into the Peninsula Station. There are currently two scheduled station stops and two flag stops, where you can flag down the train to pick you up (and your bicycle as well!)

The Blossom Music Center, located in Cuyahoga Valley National Park and run by Kent State University, has a beautiful amphitheater and lawn seating in the midst of nature. The acoustics were stunning, the Orchestra was top-notch, and Audra McDonald was in a class of her own, with a voice that's out of this world and an interaction with the audience that was down to earth.

Three Dog Night performing at the MGM Northfield. Over 30 musicians have cycled in and out of the band since its formation in 1968. The two lead singers this night (one original, one longstanding) are 81 and 76. Perhaps not as spry as in earlier days, but, boy, could they harmonize! (The bass player on the left of the picture is the son of the founder singing in the center.)

The historical Hale Farm & Village in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is well worth a visit. We happened to be there on a Civil War battle reenactment weekend, but even without that, the living history of costumed "family" members and village "tradesmen" is fascinating. We saw sheep's wool being spun into thread, spoke with a "dressmaker", and just missed the cheese-making demonstration. We heard about the active Ohio abolitionist movement from "Lucy Stanton Day Sessions" (1831-1910).

A "Civil War family" at Hale Farm & Village, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio.

"Union soldiers" before a Civil War battle reenactment.

Civil War battle reenactment.

Battlefields

Interestingly, the battle being reenacted at Hale Farm & Village in Ohio was a battle that was actually fought at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, our next stop.

The Gettysburg National Military Park, stretching over more than 6,000 acres of woods, hills, and farmlands, is a somber reminder of three days of the bloodiest fighting in the Civil War. From July 1-3, 1863, over 165,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought with cannon, rifled musket, and even bayonet and revolver on the fields and in the town. Some 7,000 men died, and an estimated 44,000 more were wounded, captured, or missing. It was the turning point of the War; never again would Confederate troops come so far north.

The monument to New York's Excelsior Brigade, dedicated in 1893, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The monument details the positions of the units in the battles, and their number of casualties.

The Park includes over 1,300 monuments, memorials, and markers for the units and soldiers that fought in the battles. About 3/4 of them honor the Union soldiers, with many of those authorized by Congress. The Confederate memorials were mostly erected later, during the era of Jim Crow segregation in the 1900's.

Stone walls, wood fences, and orchards have been preserved to match the landscape at the time. Historical markers describe the events in detail. The Adams County Historical Society's new Beyond the Battle Museum (highly recommended) even includes a room that immerses visitors in the experience of the in-town battle from inside a house. (This museum also engagingly covers the entire history of the area, including Native American and Black history. We were fortunate to hear a local historian present a talk on the physical roads leading to Gettysburg, which were a large determinant of why the battles happened there.)

Wood fences like these reconstructed ones were used to divide fields and woodlots in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and were obstacles during troop movements in the Civil War.

Doug has an indirect connection to Gettysburg: Union Colonel (later General) Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who led the dramatic and successful downhill bayonet charge against Confederate troops while defending the Union's left flank at Little Round Top, was a graduate of and then professor at Bowdoin College, Maine, and later its president; Doug's grandfather and father also graduated from Bowdoin, which was rightfully proud of its famous alumnus. (There is a family story that Doug's grandfather actually had dinner with Chamberlain, who continued to live across the road from Bowdoin College in later years and would host dinners for groups of Bowdoin students.)

Looking out from an observation tower toward the site of a famous battle, Little Round Top (the shorter of the two hills, to the left in the picture). Big Round Top (the taller hill to the right in the picture) was too steep and wooded at the time to allow for artillery or infantry.

Gettysburg's Evergreen Cemetery was the site of battle.

Adjacent to the Evergreen Cemetery is the National Cemetery, where Union soldiers were re-interred in 1863 and 1864. President Abraham Lincoln dedicated the site on November 19, 1863, with the brief and eloquent Gettysburg Address.

Veterans of later wars continue to be buried at the National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

We highly recommend the campground where we stayed, just down the road from the Cemetery and Park: Artillery Ridge Campground & Horse Park. It included not only RV and tent sites and cabins, but horse stables and corrals for those traveling with horses. (And a pool with splash pad plus farmers market and food trucks.) The campground also hosts the National Riding Stables, which offers horseback tours of the battlefield on rescue horses. (Alison would have booked this if she had known about it before we arrived.)

Campers' horses keeping an eye on Alison and Hershey from their stable, Artillery Ridge Campground & Horse Park, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

There is more to see and do here than we had time for - including the massive Cyclorama painting of the battlefield - and we would definitely consider a return trip.

But for now, we needed to be heading north, to New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts.