Trip Peek #132
Trip #73
Indiana’s Lincoln Highway

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2009 Indiana’s Lincoln Highway trip. I joined the Lincoln Highway Association in 2000 but had yet to attend a conference. With the 2009 conference being held in semi-near South Bend, IN, I thought I just might make it but my job got in the way. While there was still some hope of attending, I had plotted a trip on both Indiana LH alignments that I planned to wrap around the conference. When the conference was ruled out completely, I used those plans to fulfill another long-delayed ambition. A lifelong friend and I had talked of making a trip together but never quite firmed up plans. With him living near where the Lincoln Highway entered Indiana and the mid-trip conference no longer a factor, this two-way crossing of the state became a near-perfect opportunity. The picture shows my friend Dale gazing in exaggerated awe at the Kosciusko County Courthouse in Warsaw.

We began by driving the short distance to the state line then west through Fort Wayne where we picked up the original alignment. This took us through South Bend (about three months ahead of the conference) where we checked out the Studebaker Museum. We encountered a little snow on our second day when we finished the westbound drive and stopped at the Lincoln Highway Ideal Section just east of the Illinois line. On the third day, we drove the newer alignment eastbound between Valparaiso and Fort Wayne which includes that impressive Warsaw courthouse.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #126
Trip #163
PA Cars

Posted on October 22, 2023 by Denny

This picture is from my 2021 PA Cars trip. PA, or Pennsylvania, is where I went and cars is what I went for. The first big car exposure was in Allentown, PA, where my friend Dave Reese gave me another personal tour of the America on Wheels museum. From Allentown, my farthest point east, I headed west to Hershey and the AACA Museum. The trip was more or less organized around the museum’s Model T Driving Experience and that’s what the photo is from. Of course, I worked in a stroll through all of the AACA exhibits and a stop at The Hershey Story Museum too. I got in some miles on both the Lincoln Highway and the National Road and enjoyed a night of historic lodging on each. The National Road miles were eastbound and I spent the first night of the trip at the Headley Inn near Zanesville, OH. The last night of the trip was spent at the Lincoln Motor Court beside the Lincoln Highway near Bedford, PA.

Fallingwater and…

Posted on August 23, 2022 by Denny

After checking out Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings in 2018 and 2019, I planned to keep the string going with a visit to Fallingwater in 2020. It didn’t happen, of course. Tours were shut down for COVID-19 in March of that year and did not return until March of this year. So a trip once planned for April is taking place in August (Hey, they both start with ‘A’!) two years later. Some Lincoln Highway and National Road mileage is included along with some historic lodging.

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

Trip Peek #117
Trip #127
2015 LHA Conference

Posted on June 26, 2022 by Denny

This picture is from my 2015 LHA Conference trip. The conference was unusual in that it did not take place on the Lincoln Highway. It was held in Ann Arbor. MI, and focused on Detroit, MI. Detroit had never been served by the highway but had been home to the association’s headquarters for its entire existence. In 1915, LHA President Henry B. Joy drove to the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco on the LH after connecting with it in Indiana via a feeder route from LHA headquarters. That trip would be recreated with a tour immediately following the conference. I was present at the start of the tour but was not a participant. I did get to experience the feeder, however, even if it was in the opposite direction. Prior to the conference, I joined a small group in Elkhart, IN, that followed the feeder to near Ann Arbor. I followed it the rest of the way on my own after the conference. The picture of the Irish Hills Towers was taken while following the feeder on the way to the conference.

LHA 2022 Conference

Posted on June 21, 2022 by Denny

After two years of cancelations, it was sure nice to take in a historic highway conference in early June. That event was for the Jefferson Highway and now I get to do it again for the Lincoln Highway. This conference is being held in Joliet, Illinois. I drove here today from my home in Cincinnati, and am looking forward to bus tours and presentations for the next three days. Seeing familiar faces sure does a body good.

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

Book Review
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles

Posted on April 27, 2022 by Denny

This post is a direct violation of one of the claims made on this blog’s “About” page. There the claim is made that “You will not be seeing a review of the latest novel…”. I suppose I could claim that, at the time of this review, The Lincoln Highway: A Novel is no longer the absolute latest novel, but the fact that it is a “#1 New York Times Best Seller” means it is precisely the sort of mainstream major publisher offering I had in mind when I made that claim. My primary defense is that I was tricked into reading it. Realizing that not everyone will see that as a legitimate justification, I will try to minimize the impact of the violation by not doing a very good job.

The trick I refer to is the naming of a book after what is probably the best known of American Named Auto Trails. On publication, the name got the book quite a bit of attention in historic road circles. But the excited chatter that the publication triggered was not followed by a bunch of reports from thrilled readers. I was not all that surprised. I am, after all, quite familiar with just how little The Grapes of Wrath, an older book rather popular among road fans, deals with viticulture.

I honestly had no intention of reading the book until a friend, whose opinion I trust, described it as “a very intriguing story” while confirming that it contained “not a whole lot about the highway”. At about the same time, I started noticing various accolades and warm reviews being heaped on the book. I put myself on the library’s waiting list, picked up the book when it became available, and read it in spite of — not because of — its title.

There have been other books that have taken the name of a highway for their own. I have not been particularly pleased when the name of a multi-state auto trail is used for a book that is basically about just one of those states but I’ve been tolerant. I’m not quite as tolerant when such a name is grabbed for something that isn’t really about any portion of the highway at all. I am also a bit put off by the counting down of chapters and the use of em dashes instead of established quoting conventions. I see both as gimmicks.

However, even with the gimmicks and questionable name, the tale the book tells is a damned good one. I think my buddy Dale’s one-line review sums up my view as well so I’m just going to brazenly steal it: “Not a whole lot about the highway but a very intriguing story of young men in 1954.”

The Lincoln Highway: A Novel, Amor Towles, Viking (October 5, 2021), 6.375 x 9.5 inches, 592 pages, ISBN 978-0735222359
Available through Amazon.

Celebrating

Posted on April 10, 2022 by Denny

Tuesday was my birthday, and there was a blog post that day more or less announcing it and revealing that I had removed from my body the only thing about it that was getting thinner. This post describes the far-ranging travel and wild celebration that filled the day. The party actually started in early morning when I met my buddy John for breakfast in Wilmington. I left there thinking I might follow US-22 all the way to Steubenville but a prediction of rain prompted me to switch to a shorter path using US-62 at Washington Courthouse, and congestion, as I neared Columbus, nudged me onto a faster expressway route. In fact, I gave myself up to the GPS at that point and Garmin kept me on I-71 until I reached US-30 near Mansfield.

I continued blindly following the voice in the box until a glimpse of a semi-familiar cheese shop brought me to my senses. Shisler’s Cheese House is a place I normally associate with the Lincoln Highway so, after picking up some Swiss and cheddar to munch on later, I sought out a few bits of the old road. I made a side trip in Canton but returned to the old Lincoln and the brick Baywood Street in Robertsville.

The target of my Canton excursion was Fat Head’s newest brewpub at the north edge of town. Fat Head’s started in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1992 and opened this location, their fourth, in 2018. That’s Black Knight Schwarzbier in the glass.

The place that the GPS had been leading me to was the Spread Eagle Tavern in Hanoverton. The picture at the top of this post is of the tavern’s sign. Hanoverton is a Lincoln Highway town so I’ve stopped at the Spread Eagle several times. I have eaten there once but had never stayed there. I corrected that by spending Tuesday night in the Van Buren Room. It’s the inn’s smallest in both space and price but was more than adequate for me.

Between check-in and dinner, I was able to see familiar rooms empty for the first time and make first-time visits to some other spaces. This second group included the lower level rathskeller which is currently open only on Fridays and Saturdays. The tavern first opened in 1837 but had fallen into disrepair until a major restoration took place in the late 1980s. Additions and improvements (such as converting the dirt-floored basement to the brick-lined rathskeller) happened, but all materials came from either the tavern itself or other badly neglected buildings from the same period.

I ate dinner at a table just out of frame on the left side of this picture and breakfast just out of frame on the right. I failed to get a picture of breakfast which is truly sad because it was one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had and it was included with the room. I was just too busy chatting with Kim, my server, about the building and other topics both related and not. I had been better prepared at dinner and did get a snapshot of my wonderful walleye by candlelight.

PA Cars

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Denny

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.

Trip Peek #106
Trip #79
Lincoln Highway West

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2009 Lincoln Highway West trip. The last part of the trip would be my third caravan to the National Corvette Museum for an anniversary celebration. In 1999 and 2003, I drove Historic Route 66 to join a caravan in Los Angeles. This time I would join a caravan in San Francisco. I had previously driven the Lincoln Highway east of the IN-IL border in piecemeal fashion and would pick it up there to drive the western bits. My oldest son lived in San Francisco at the time and joined me for the first part of the caravan east.

The Lincoln Highway portion of the trip allowed me to see in person things I’d only read about or seen in videos. As I looked over the journal in preparing this post, I was saddened to see that some of those things were already gone. Among them is the fellow cleaning my windshield in the accompanying photo. Dick Grudzinski died in 2016. Kensinger Service and Supply lives on, however, with Dick’s grandson Joe managing, pumping gas, and washing windshields.

The sixth day of this trip coincided with the tenth anniversary of the first ever live post to this website. From that day forward, a sidebar in the trip journal paid homage to the events of ten years before.

Trip Peek #98
Trip #152
Dirk and Lincoln

Posted on September 27, 2020 by Denny

This picture is from the 2018 trip I called Dirk and Lincoln. The purpose of the trip was to see Dirk Hamilton performing at a venue he played at frequently in the 1980s with the musicians he played with there. That was all I needed to justify the trip, but the venue was in California and there was no reason not to hang around a few days. That’s where the Lincoln part comes in. I flew to Sacramento then drove to Stockton for the show. I drove down to the bizarre Winchester Mystery House the next morning and picked up some Lincoln Highway on the way back. The rest of the trip was spent following a sort of Lincoln Highway loop to the east through Carson City, Reno, and Donner Pass then back to Sacramento for a night that included a visit to the Delta King.

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