Author Archives: Denny

Book Review
A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound
John & Alice Ridge

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I’m going the get the full disclosure stuff out of the way right up front. In July of 2020, as I was getting serious in planning my own drive on the Yellowstone Trail, the Ridges gave me access to an online preliminary version of the Washington chapter of this book. Then, when I actually made that drive and stopped to visit them in Wisconsin, they supplied me with their most recent markups for all of the states I had yet to cover. But, even with those extraordinary “sneak peeks”, holding the finished product in my hands revealed some wonderful surprises.

One can be seen in the picture at left. It is not, as one might reasonably guess, an image of exposed strata at a geological dig somewhere along the Trail. It is a shot of the book’s unusually colorful edge. The book’s subtitle is “A Modern Guide to Driving the Historic Yellowstone Trail 1912-1930”, and a majority of its pages are dedicated to providing that guidance through maps and mile-by-mile descriptions of the route and things beside it. There is a brown-edged guide section for each of the thirteen states through which the Yellowstone Trail passed. Those guide sections also contain what the authors call “History Bits” on a gravel background that appears mottled at the edges. These pages contain old newspaper articles, driving notes, and other items. Preceding each guide section is a yellow-edged introduction to the state. Green-edged pages contain history and other information that does not apply to a single state. Although I have no field experience with this color coding, it strikes me as something that cannot help but make it quicker to access a specific subject or map.

All those colors also serve to indicate that the book goes well beyond its subtitle. I wasn’t totally oblivious to that in my earlier looks but with those, I had been almost entirely concerned with where to go. With relaxed navigational needs, those yellow and green pages got a lot more attention and I found them quite interesting. They make good reading even if you have no intention of ever driving a single mile of Yellowstone Trail. In fact, not every item on them is directly tied to the YT. Plenty of interesting information and stories about the early days of auto travel appears on these pages and on some of those gravel pages, too.

As can be seen, there are tons of photos in the book. They are in color on non-gloss paper. Most are rather small but all are clear and large enough to serve their purpose. Sure, it might be nice to see some of these images as 8 by 10 glossies but this is a book to use not to lay on a coffee table. The paper choice helps keep the book’s price reasonable and the image size allows more to be included. Good choices, I’d say.

I guess you could say that the gravel and brown pages are the reasons for the book’s existence. They make up that “Modern Guide to Driving the Yellowstone Trail”. It is these pages that I have actually used in the past and I found them accurate and informative. Note that, although “History Bits” and “Mile-By-Mile” pages are interspersed, all “Mile-By-Mile” pages are on the right-hand side and no individual entry is split across pages. This is just one example of the author’s remarkable attention to detail.

The whole book is organized from west to east. The state chapters go from Washington to Massachuttes and mileages given within the chapters are from the state’s western border. An ordering from east to west is probably more common in route guides, but there is certainly nothing magical about it. Primary maps use a uniform four-miles-per-inch scale with each typically covering something around 20-30 miles. They are augmented with higher precision insets when needed, and low-resolution full state maps show where each section map fits within the state.

I have encountered guides that contain turn-by-turn directions and almost nothing more. As a solo traveler, I can appreciate such guides because they make it easy to stay on the route. They also make it easy to miss some point of interest. That does not describe this guide. Using it requires either significant preplanning, a navigator, or frequent review. It may seem like I’m saying that’s a bad thing although I definitely am not. I want good information and I’ll deal with it through preplanning and frequent stops.

The Ridges have been researching the Yellowstone Trail since the mid-1990s. In 2003, they helped form the modern Yellowstone Trail Association and currently serve on its board. They published the 96-page Introducing the Yellowstone Trail in 2000 and probably almost immediately began thinking of this larger guide. That sounds like a long time to research a subject but this subject is over 3,600 miles long and the fact that the records of the original Yellowstone Trail Association were destroyed in 1930 when it ceased operation sure didn’t make it any easier. The Ridges have used that time well and brought together an incredible amount of information on the route’s history as well as its path which they share in a book they call an invitation.

The yellow-edged introduction to South Dakota ends with an invitation to “…enjoy the Trail through the state…”, and there are other invitations in the book as well. The big one, however, is in the very first sentence of the preface. “This book is an invitation to take, by auto or armchair, the Great American Road Trip along the nearly forgotten but historically important Yellowstone Trail.” I invite you to first acquire then accept John and Alice’s invitation. I’m doing it from an armchair right now but I’m ready to do it by auto despite the fact that I did it a few months ago. I’m always ready to repeat a trip, of course, and I always discover things I missed the instant a trip ends. But not like this.

A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound: A Modern Guide to Driving the Historic Yellowstone Trail 1912-1930, John Wm. Ridge and Alice A. Ridge, Yellowstone Trail Publishers (July 2021), 8.5 x 11 inches, 428 pages, ISBN 978-0-9702832-5-2, Available through the Yellowstone Trail Association.

Driving Lessons

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During the writing of Tracing A T To Tampa, the fact that I had never driven a Model T Ford began to bother me more and more with every passage that referred to some detail about the car that “put America on wheels”. I had seen plenty of Model Ts and had ridden in a few but every comment that I made about the T’s operation came from observation and “book learning”. I wondered about how accurate I was being.

The T that I traced to Tampa is believed to be the touring car in the first photograph which belonged to my great-grandparents. The coupe is a car they owned many years after the Florida trip. It is currently in the possession of an uncle and I considered bugging him for driving lessons but in the end, I went for the Model T Driving Experience at the AACA museum in Hersey, PA. That gave me access to multiple cars in an environment set up for novice drivers. I combined it with a few other items from my to-do list and made a road trip that is documented here. The driving experience is included in day 4 but not much is said about the actual driving. That’s what prompted me to make this blog post.

This picture is one I used in the trip journal. It shows the four cars that students were to drive. I drove the green, yellow, and red cars but the black car, actually a roadster pickup truck, conked out before my turn came. It was replaced by another black roadster pickup, but the top stayed up on the replacement. That’s it in the b&w photo at the top of the article.

The image at left was taken from the “Ford Model T Instruction Book”. Model Ts were often delivered by train or other means directly to a new owner with nothing resembling today’s dealer prep (and accompanying charge). The 45-page book provided all the information necessary to prepare, operate, and maintain what might be the very first powered vehicle the owner had ever seen.

Our cars had all been prepped, of course, and all were equipped with electric starters. Plus, we would have the advantage of a classroom presentation with visual aids. Against the open doorway, the visual aids weren’t a whole lot easier to see in person than they are in the photograph but we all had copies available in a handout. The use of the spark advance and battery/magneto switch in starting the engine was discussed but today the instructors would take care of those details. Students would be dealing with the hand throttle, the steering wheel, and three pedals.

It seemed everyone was familiar with a hand throttle from a tractor, lawnmower, or something similar. And everyone recognized the steering wheel. It is one of just two controls that have maintained the same function from Model T to Tesla although neither can be operated with modern instincts. Most modern cars have a steering ratio of 12:1 or more; the ratio for Ts is 4:1 or 5:1. It is essentially the only thing on a Model T that can be called quick.

This picture of a Model T’s three pedals appeared in the handout. The bulk of student brain activity would be focused on these. ‘C’, ‘R’, and ‘B’ markings identify them as clutch, reverse, and brake. The brake pedal is the other control that technically retains the same function in modern cars as in the T. However, like the steering wheel, how well it performs that function is dramatically different. Today’s brake pedals are mostly power-assisted and hydraulically connected to large disc brakes at all four wheels that will bring a 3,000-pound 60 MPH vehicle to a halt in forty yards or so. A Model T’s brake pedal is mechanically attached to bands that tighten around a shaft in the transmission that will bring a 1,200-pound 10 MPH vehicle to a halt eventually.

Although there is nothing quite like the reverse pedal in modern cars, its function is simple and easy to understand. With the car stopped and no other pedal pressed, pushing it to the floor causes the car to move backward. The idea of “no other pedal pressed” would really apply to all of the driving we would do on this day. The pedals would be pressed one at a time.

Clutch pedals in modern cars are becoming increasingly rare but they do exist and it’s tempting to think that knowing how to operate a modern manual transmission will help in operating a Model T. Not a chance. Almost every instinct developed by driving manual transmissions will only get in the way when driving a Model T. I will expand on this later but today we would be doing all of our driving in low gear which meant that the clutch was engaged with the pedal pressed and disengaged with the pedal released. Yes, driving in low gear did translate to driving at low speed and I don’t doubt that some readers will think that lame. Pshaw. With 4:1 steering in a fairly primitive car with totally unfamiliar controls, 15 MPH was plenty fast.

A Q&A session followed the presentation then we moved outside where instructors reviewed parts of what we had learned using the real Model Ts as visual aids. Next, an instructor climbed into the driver’s seat of each car and a student joined them for a lap around the course as a passenger. The “course” was an unmarked path around a closed-off portion of the museum grounds with an uphill section on grass and a downhill section on asphalt.

The green roadster was the first car I climbed into but I have no pictures of me as either a passenger or driver. Even though I’d read about it and had ridden with others doing it, the strangeness of holding that clutch pedal down to keep moving didn’t completely register until it was my foot doing the holding. I also was a little surprised at how much the throttle was used. It was positioned for easy fingertip access while holding the wheel and adjustments were required for climbing the small hill and at other points too. I also did a lap as a passenger in the yellow speedster. The instructor thought that prudent because of some play in the steering. I managed to hand off my camera for the speedster drive but only have a picture from that first lap. My drives in both of these cars went well in that I didn’t run into or over anything and I didn’t stall either one. That streak would not continue.

Helpful volunteers did snap pictures of me at the wheel of the other two Ts, both of which I managed to stall. In fact, I stalled the cool-looking furniture van twice. At ages of 94 to 108 years, these vehicles are entitled to some idiosyncrasies and they do indeed have them. For the speedster, it was steering. For the red van, it was a dead spot in the throttle. Twice, when I wanted a little more oomph, I moved the throttle a little when it needed to be moved a lot. I have a different excuse for stalling the black pickup. Model Ts have a parking brake of sorts but using it was not part of the day’s normal procedure. There was no need in the level lot. For some reason, the previous driver had seen fit to set it but that did not keep me from reaching the beginning of the hill before the combination of brakes and incline started to bog things down. The instructor figured that out just as the T’s engine chugged to a halt. With that exception, my drive in the little pickup was understandably the best of the day. Operating that strange clutch and using the hand throttle never became 100% natural but, as it is with most things, the more I did it the better I became.

I said I would expand on clutch operation and I’m going to use a detail from an earlier picture to help with that. I’m also going to take the opportunity to describe briefly what happened when I stalled those cars.

Until it is up and running, a Model T’s engine needs to get its electrical power from a battery. A switch on the dash-mounted wooden box controls that. Following a stall, the instructor would flip that switch to battery and maybe make some adjustments to the throttle and spark advance. They would then tell me to press the starter button. In the picture, it’s on the floor. In other cars, it was on the verticle panel below the seat. Once the engine started, the instructor switched things back to magneto operation and away we’d go.

As I’d recently been thinking of my great-grandfather driving a Model T to Florida and back, at some point I began to think about him with his foot pressed to the floor for the whole trip. That really wasn’t required and that lever that the instructor is holding in the picture above is part of the reason. Pulling it all the way back activates small drum brakes on the read wheels. That’s what was going on when I stalled the pickup. Moving it all the way forward enables high gear. With high gear selected, pressing the clutch pedal to the floor still engages low gear, releasing it partway disengages the transmission, while releasing it all the way engages high gear. So, when driving to Florida, push that lever forward, press and hold the clutch pedal until you’re moving at a decent clip, then slowly release it. Adjust speed with your fingers as necessary and let your feet relax.

The museum does not call what they offer a school. It’s a Model T Driving Experience. The certificate I received simply acknowledges that I “completed” the experience with no indication of how good or bad I did or how badly I frightened the instructors. It does not authorize me to do anything whatsoever and that includes bragging about driving four different Model Ts in low gear without stalling two of them. I’m doing that entirely on my own.

Heritage Village Cincinnati

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Friday felt a little odd. It had absolutely nothing scheduled but it was surrounded by days that did. Noting strenuous or even particularly time-consuming, but there were meetings and appointments with specific times that had to be attended to. It would seem logical, I think, to want to just sit around the shanty on that uncommitted day, and that’s probably what I would have done if the day hadn’t promised sunshine and 80 degrees. I know it was my awareness that there would soon be a huge gap between 80 degree days that made me want to avoid wasting this one. I went out to breakfast at a place a little farther away than normal and which I hadn’t been to in a long time. Over a goetta and cheese omelet, I pondered ways to put the day to use. Museums weren’t high on my list because I did not want to spend a lot of time indoors, but I eventually used “museum” as an internet search term and got a near-perfect hit. Heritage Village Museum & Education Center is definitely a museum. It says it right there in the name. But it also says it’s a village which means there is some open space. It really did seem to be exactly what I was looking for.

It wasn’t far from the restaurant where I was eating, so I simply headed directly there when I was done. As I approached the building where admission fees are collected, I passed a sign stating that guided tours were scheduled for 10:00, 12:45, and 3:00. It was about 10:30. Inside the building, I joked that I’d timed my arrival quite badly for a guided tour. The attendant agreed and added something about the last one being yesterday. I eventually figured out that guided tours are given May through September, and that she meant the last one for the year. It was October 1. I somehow felt less foolish missing a tour by a day than by half an hour. I paid my admission. received a self-guided tour brochure, and set off to guide myself.

The first building encountered was also the first building moved into the village. Elk Lick House was from a spot in Clermont County that is now covered by East Fork Lake. The Chester Park Train Station and Crossing Tender’s Booth came from Winton Place across Spring Grove Avenue from Chester Park racetrack and amusement park. The McAlpin’s clock is one of the few things in the village I remember in its original location. It stood in front of the store on Fourth Street from 1992 to 1999. It was actually the fifth clock to stand there with the first four falling to “the elements and traffic mishaps”.

The Fetter Store came from what is now known as Owensville in Clermont County. It was built around 1866. Dr. Langdon’s Office was moved here in 1973 from the Linwood section of Cincinnati. Preparations for Halloween and trick-or-treating were in evidence behind the doctor’s office as well as in that tender’s booth back at the train station.

Myers Schoolhouse is the newest addition to the village and is actually still in the process of being restored. It was moved here in 2008. Its official name was Delhi Township District School #3. It was in use as a school from 1891 until 1926 when Delhi Township consolidated all of its schools.

After reaching the schoolhouse and turning around, the first building encountered is the Somerset Church. The Presbyterian church was built around 1829 and, until it was moved to the village in 1991, stood near Fields Ertel and Montgomery roads less than a mile from where I currently live. Next to the church is the Kemper Log House and a reproduction of its stone kitchen. The house that Rev. James Kemper built in 1804 is the oldest structure in the village. It originally stood near where Cincinnati’s Eden Park is today.

The Hayner House is both the beginning and end of the tour. It was built near South Lebanon in the 1850s. In the village, it faces Sharon Creek as it once faced the little Miami River. The entrance to the museum and gift shop, where tour tickets are purchased, is on the other side of the house. A glance down while walking between the creek and the house can provide a reminder as to just which state you are in.

Smooth As Glass

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Not long ago, I read about Jack Pine’s Glass Pumpkin Festival in a Make The Journey Fun blog post and thought it interesting but just a bit far away for a casual outing. Then City Beat published an article on it that renewed my interest but didn’t make it any closer. The weather, however, did. Right on cue, temperatures plummeted into the 40s on Wednesday, the first day of autumn, and stayed there Thursday. Possible rain was predicted for Saturday and Sunday. Grasping at Friday’s sunny and 70 seemed a very logical thing to do and the two-hour drive to the festival became a very logical way to do it.

I had not signed up in advance so didn’t make it into the reserved parking area but walking from the overflow area was hardly a hardship and the $5.00 parking fee was the only thing even remotely resembling an admission charge. That’s Pine’s studio and production facility in the first picture. The “pumpkin patch” pointed to by the arrow in front of the biggun in the second picture is shown in the third. It’s where pumpkins and other products of the Pine studio are displayed and offered for sale.

Pumpkins and pumpkin-shaped items are naturally the biggest sellers at this time of year. The theme for the 2021 Pumpkin of the Year is “Celebrate Life”. A number of them are lined up in the second picture. No two alike, but no two totally dissimilar.

There are some real pumpkins in the patch and some of those are quite impressive.

Glass pumpkins outnumber the organic kind and will undoubtedly outlast them, too.

After making a pass through the Pumpkin Patch, I roamed among the other vendors taking glorious photos of the sunlight sharing itself with their glass and metal art. I captured a pumpkin ice cream cone held high in front of the place where I bought it and took pictures of the fellow who played guitar and sang while I ate it. I entered the studio and recorded several phenomenal photos of the talented glass blowers and the gorgeous objects of art they produced. Then I misplaced the SD card containing those photos. This photo taken with my phone is all I’ve got. The festival continues through today (Sunday) so there’s time for you to take your own pictures. Or find some in the parking lot.

ADDENDUM 27-Aug-2022: The chances of finding pictures in the parking aren’t as good as they once seemed. The lost SD card was found and turned into its own post for Halloween. It’s here. 

PA Cars

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I pieced together a trip from odds and ends and leftovers then slapped on the name PA Cars because it includes a couple of Pennsylvania car museums. I’m going to learn to drive a Model T at one of them. The first day’s journal has just been posted despite it being the end of the trip’s fourth day in real life.

This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.

Remembering Larry

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Larry Goshorn - Cincinnati Summer of Love Reunion 2008Larry Goshorn left us this week. There was what seemed to be a promising upturn after a few rough days in the hospital but it was not to be. He breathed his last on September 14. I did a lot of remembering back in 2012 when he announced his retirement from performing. I was among those who didn’t completely buy that and expected him to occasionally pop up on a stage for a song or two, but I don’t believe he ever did. He did do some producing and wrapped up a long-simmering project in 2016 with the release of “I Wish I Could Fly“. Nine of the album’s ten songs were written entirely by Larry and the tenth was written by Larry and his wife Kim. The backing musicians were Cincinnati all-stars in various groupings. Plenty of current stars were always ready to play with Larry and Larry was always ready to help the not-yet-stars, too.

I’m going to let my 2012 Hats Off to Larry post supply most of the memories for this post. If I were to redo it, “I Wish I Could Fly” would be one of the two big additions. The other would be the song he wrote and recorded last year that was his response to the death of his brother Tim in 2017 (Remembering Timmy).

Big thanks to Jerry Burck for providing an embeddable version of the recording. It grabbed me when I first heard it in February 2020. Its grip is even firmer now. 

Kim’s (Is) Back

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Not only is Kim’s Classic Diner back in operation, owner Kim Starr is back at the helm. After years of wanting to own a diner, a few more years shopping for the right one, and another year moving and rehabbing a 1946 Silk City, Kim seemed to be living her dream. That dream, however, was put on hold about a dozen years ago so that Kim could devote all of her energy to helping her daughter deal with life-threatening heart and lung issues. Now it is those threats that have been put on hold — hopefully forever — as daughter helps mom bring her diner back to life.

There were attempts to keep things going without Kim’s involvement. Over the years, the diner was leased to three different operators but all three failed as a business, a responsible leasee, or both. I remember two of them but must have missed the third one entirely. I know it can’t be easy to make a classic diner go in a town of well under 3,000, but every time I drove through Sabina and past the closed business, I thought to myself that this place would be hopping if Kim was still here.

Well, Kim is here now, and while the place may not yet be hopping all the time, it apparently is some of the time. Employees spoke of being “swamped” on occasion and a scan of the diner’s Facebook page shows that the daily specials have “SOLD OUT” more than once since the August 20 reopening. I was there on Friday for breakfast. It wasn’t swamped but I sure was not alone. I did my normal dawdling while other customers came and went and I think there were always between five and ten people eating with me.

My Friday visit was just one day shy of the eighteenth anniversary of the original opening. One of the reasons Kim had picked the second anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks for her opening date was the diner’s New York history. I was happy to see articles about that history back on the walls and especially happy to see that three mugs from those days (delivered to Kim by a visiting waitress) were back on the shelf. These were among the items that had gone home with Kim for safekeeping during her absence from the diner.

In addition to being one of the coolest diners within my extended neighborhood (It’s about 40 miles straight up US-22), Kim’s is special to me for another reason. It was the subject of the first of four Diner Days articles I wrote for American Road Magazine between 2006 and 2008. It was, in fact, the very first thing of mine published to the general public. In that article, I spoke of the use of car names for breakfast selections, and I am happy to report that that is once more the case. This time I had a Mercury.   

WTC and Me

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Nineteen years ago, on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed so many innocent people in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field, I posted some of my related memories on this site. A standalone web page was used as this blog did not yet exist. The page was accessible for many years through a link on this site’s home page. That link was eventually removed during a site layout change. However, the page itself remained in place for some time even though there was no way to access it other than entering its URL. Early this year, when the site was moved to its current host, the page was among those not making the move so that even a direct URL became useless. Today, on the twentieth anniversary of those attacks, I have restored the page and am providing access to it here and through the image above even though the page continues to be much more personally therapeutic than generally informative.  

Ohio Cup Vintage Base Ball 2021

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I saw my first vintage base ball game right here in Ohio Village back in 2010. It was a July 4th Ohio Muffins intrasquad game. The Muffins might be the oldest vintage base ball team in the country and are definitely the first to play a regular schedule. They are currently celebrating their 40th year of existence. The big end of summer gathering of teams called the Ohio Cup Vintage Base Ball Festival was well established when I saw that 2010 game but this is my first time attending. This is the 29th festival after a COVID19 triggered cancelation last year.

The game is played with the rules, equipment, and courtesy of the 1860s. There are no big padded gloves or other protective equipment. Pitching is underhanded with no calling of strikes or balls. The idea was to put the ball in play, get some exercise, and have some fun. Having fun today includes dressing the part by both players and umpires.

There are 25 teams participating in the festival with games taking place on four diamonds. The teams come from places as far away as Tennessee and Minnesota and their friends, families, and idle players make up a large part of the audience although there are a fair number of pure spectators like me. Note that the event is called a festival rather than a tournament. The goal, remember, is to have fun. There are no trophies and no official winner beyond the individual games

Without the need to call strikes and balls, the (there’s only one) umpire’s main job seems to be identifying foul balls.

Runs and outs can only happen after a ball is hit. Runs have always been scored only by crossing home plate. Then as now, a runner can be retired with a tag or a force-out, and catching a hit ball in flight seems to have always resulted in an out. In 1860 and in Ohio Cup Vintage Base Ball, catching a ball on the first bounce also counts as an out. I’m guessing that went away when padded gloves appeared.

At the end of each game, the teams line up along the base paths and a member of each team gives a short speech that usually has a few jokes and a compliment or two. Then each team gives three huzzahs before they pass each other and shake hands. Yeah, that’s the way it should be done. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

I’d heard about an Umbrella Alley in Columbus so decided to take a look while I was there. It was rather nice but, after seeing the Umbrellas in Batesville, also rather underwhelming with a total of thirty-nine umbrellas. I thought the giraffe at the nearby Lego store was cooler.

An Airy Plane Ride

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A couple of weeks ago I credited a blog post mentioned by another blog post with nudging me to revisit Hartman Rock Garden. However, it wasn’t the rock garden post that Jim Grey’s blog actually referenced and which prompted me to subscribe to Make the Journey Fun. It was this one: Deep Thoughts In Flight. It really struck a chord.

It was a chord that was just waiting to be struck. Flying in an open airplane had long been part of my own — not particularly deep — thoughts and blogger Brandi Betts’ July post, along with a couple of others about her airborne experiences with Goodfolk & O’Tymes Biplane Rides, finally prompted me to act on those thoughts.

I spoke with owner/pilot Dewey Davenport by phone and made tentative plans for a flight on August 9. Clouds and the possibility of rain led us to postpone the outing, and when my friend John and I prepared to climb aboard on Tuesday, there was no doubt in our minds that the postponement was a good thing. The only clouds in the sky were the soft fluffy welcoming sort.

As probably everyone reading this knows, in the early days of flight, passengers sat in front of the pilot and this plane is definitely from those early days. The four-passenger (plus pilot) D-25 New Standard was built in 1930, less than twenty-seven years after Wilbur and Orville first left the ground in an aircraft with a passenger capacity of zero. During the in hangar preliminaries, Dewey gave us a rundown of the D-25 in general and of this one in particular. Although it spent some of its middle years as a cropduster, it had been built specifically for barnstorming which is precisely the role it has returned to. A photo of this very plane appeared in National Geographic showing its use along the Snake River in one of the very first air rescue operations — in 1935!.

As we climbed into the sky, I, feeling we would likely need it later, kept an eye on our left landing gear. I assume John was similarly watching over the right side gear although I did not verify that. Conversation with protective earmuffs in place is challenging. I have flown in small airplanes in the past but never with the delightful in-your-face wind and noise of an open cockpit. I suppose it might become noticeably less delightful on a multi-hour flight to the coast although I’m not entirely sure of that. Experiencing flight in exactly the same manner that it was experienced close to a couple of decades before I was born was pretty darned cool and not a little exhilarating. Even though the overhead wing meant we passengers were traveling comfortably in the shade, the bright sun did enable me to take a long-distance selfie.

The view that an open aircraft provides is clearly unbeatable. In addition, Dewey made sure we experienced some of the unique non-visual sensations available as well. There was nothing remotely dangerous, of course, but we were treated to some climbs and dips that delivered that hint of weightlessness found on really good roller coasters. And there were some fairly hard banks. First to the right, so I could look straight at the ground right past John. Then to the left, so I could look straight at the ground right past nothing. That third picture might look like we are parked on the ground but nope. Dewey was just giving us a feel for what crop-dusting might have been like.

After we actually had landed, I exited ahead of John and turned around just as Dewey answered his question about where the nearest cornfield was.

 

Another flight was scheduled shortly after ours, and we stuck around to watch it take off. It was a very short taxi back to the runway then a revving of the radial engine started the airplane speeding — in a leisurely manner — over the grass to break free — also in a leisurely manner — from Earth’s surface. Dewey is almost always successful in his goal of making sure every customer has a great experience. He definitely works at it. The only time someone has been unhappy was when a flight had to be canceled due to darkness. Not only do people leave feeling happy, a goodly number no doubt leave feeling envious of Dewey’s “office”. John and I sure did.

I don’t have a “favorite blogs” list, but if I did Make the Journey Fun would almost certainly be on it. Brandi Betts visits some of the same sorts of places I visit and writes about some of the same sorts of things I write about. She does it more frequently (often daily), also writes about some things I do not (e.g., her cat), and has the occasional deep thought post more often than I do (which is pretty much never). But even if she had not turned me onto a wonderful keeper of bi-planes or reminded me of a delightful rock garden I’d still applaud her blog simply because of the name and the tagline. And that’s some pretty deep thought for me, eh?