Three Walls, but Many Doors & Bridges

Pink Floyd's Wall

Walls have been the news the last year and more, but not all of them are on borders. We experienced three different kinds during the Midwest segment of our cross-country road trip.  One was Pink Floyd’s wall —a gigantic prop for one of his tours now suspended from the ceiling at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.  He hit the wall on drug abuse, and hence the title of his tour.

We love museums and think that this one ties with the Newseum in Washington DC as the most engaging. However, it wins hands down for the most energetic.  It is filled  with artifacts, history, music, interactive displays, and FUN!  It even partnered with the Newseum for an exhibit on Rock and Politics over the past 60 years.  As we said in a Facebook post, it was well worth the detour.  But how did that detour come about?

Michael Jackson's
Glove

Beyonce's Outfits

One of many of Lady Gaga's
performance outfits

Ringo's Drumset

In three words, we are klutzes.  We carelessly  pulled out of a large commercial campsite in Bristol, Indiana (Amish country), and our wheel chock banged the grey water tank, creating an embarrassing  flood of sink and shower water on the campground road.  By the time we finally hit the road, it was too late to make it to Buffalo, but if we headed due east and put Buffalo on the return trip, we could hit Cleveland in a few hours.  Excellent decision!  Even in our bad luck, we are lucky.  

The whole field and adjoining forest to ourselves

The ultimate lawn gnome

East of Cleveland, 150 miles, we happened upon an Airstream-only campground. We had a secluded spot and, unlike other campgrounds, immediately got into the full socialization mode with interesting people from all over.

Our next wall was hitting the wall of driving and spending a large sum on tolls. Yesterday (Sunday) we covered 380 miles through the beautiful rolling hills and forests of Pennsylvania to the Hudson Valley, but it was tense high-speed interstate driving with a lot of trucks on the road and construction detours.  Kathy was still loopy from her strep throat and and allergy meds, and I had a sore throat, but our goal was to park in a place for five whole nights.  Feruza, our Uzbek daughter from New York, met us in the campground with some homemade bread and delicacies just brought to the US by her brother.  Worth the trip!

The third wall was was in Racine, last Friday, but it was a good wall.  We experienced the power of ceilings and no walls in Frank Lloyd Wright’s S.C. Johnson administration building and research center.  Unfortunately, we could only take photos outside, but our previous blog has one from the inside that I downloaded from the Internet.

The entryway to the admin. building

Entry from the executive carport

SC Johnson
Research
Building, 

Leaving the tour, we noticed the protective rubber plate beneath our transmission was dangling.  The roads in Wisconsin and Minnesota are so rough, but Racine’s are the worst.  The helpful VW dealership put in place with zip ties at no charge  and we were on our way, to Chicago and beyond, delayed once again.

But now all is well, even though our grey water tank still leaks despite more repairs.

We’re in the Poughkeepsie-Hyde Park region now, and everything is so green, beautiful, and rich with history.  After I talked my way into an urgent care clinic without my health insurance card (see previous blog) to get a throat culture (negative so far), we  rode our bikes on a four-mile loop across a bike-pedestrian converted railroad bridged and back over  a toll bridge.

Starting the Hudson Walk/Bikeway, built in 1886,
made into a R2T in 2009

View from above

High and wide!

The RR bridge from the toll bridge

We toured Eleanor Roosevelt’s home and hiked a mile up the hill to FDR’s summer cottage.  We sat on the veranda and wondered about all the thoughts and discussions he had there overlooking the Hudson before the trees took over.  Tomorrow will be FDR’s home and library.  While we talk about walls, in retrospect we've encountered way more bridges and doors--infinitely better than most walls.

One of the cottages at Val Kil, Elanor's modest estate