Battle of Lake Erie Bicentennial
Day 1
Tall Ships and a Tall Tower
Day 2
A Day in Sandusky
Day 3
Sippin' by the Dock of the Bay
Day 4
Across the Border
Day 5
Parkway? What Parkway?
Day 6
A Little Dixie
Day 7
Flint Bypassed, Meigs Not
It took a few days but I now have two maps posted that wrap up the trip. The first is the normal locator map under the button at the top of the page. The second is the Dixie Highway scoring map here. Noticing that I have now driven all of the DH in Michigan caused me to think about the Dixie Highway in terms of states for the first time. Ten states contain pieces of the DH. I have driven all of it in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. I've driven most of it in Indiana and maybe half of it in Georgia and Florida. Although I have been on short bits of the Dixie in Illinois, I have not yet driven any of the route in that state in any organized manner.
September 4, 2013 (day 7)
I finished the Port Huron Loop, traveled the Flint Bypass, and checked out
Fort Meigs. Then I went home.
September 3, 2013 (day 6)
Once I was back in the US of A, I found the perfect place to be my Dixie
chicken.
September 2, 2013 (day 5)
It took awhile but I eventually figured out what the Tecumseh Parkway is
and I drove it, too. I got inside a museum that was closed yesterday but
was shut out of two others.
September 1, 2013 (day 4)
I visited an 1813 battle field in Michigan then drove into Canada and
attended a homecoming at a place I'd never been before.
August 31, 2013 (day 3)
Today I returned to Put-in-Bay on the Goodtime I with a little more
time to spend on shore. I toured the Niagara along with a few land
based grog dispensaries.
August 30, 2013 (day 2)
I just hung around town today and visited a couple of museums. By failing
to do my homework, I missed the opportunity to see a once decapitated but
now repaired statue but I did see its successor.
August 29, 2013 (day 1)
I started for Sandusky before sunup then enjoyed a leisurely cruise to
Put-in-Bay. Saw tall ships from a tall tower with lots of water. These
lakes are great.
Prelude - August 26, 2013
In between the war that made us united and the one that kept us that way,
there was another of major importance that gets but a fraction of the
attention given the other two. There are great portions of the country and
the media where it is quite impossible to not know we are in the middle of
the sesquicentennial of our Civil War with little or no evidence that now
is also the bicentennial of the War of 1812. It's the one where we were
invaded and our president's official residence burned. It's the one where
we lost and had to retake the future center of our automobile industry.
It's the one they named that song with the cannons after. It's the one in
which Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry reported to his boss that "We
have met the enemy and they are ours."
That last bit happened exactly 200 years ago, come September 10, and roughly 200 miles from where I live. The line opened Perry's dispatch to General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie. The message continued with a list of just what Perry had made ours: "Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop." The battle's bicentennial is being observed with a reenactment although the reenactment will precede the actual anniversary date by more than a week. It takes place September 2.
I've long known of the reenactment but shoved all thought of it aside until the Lincoln Highway Association Tour was over and by then there wasn't much available for seeing the actual mid-lake battle. But I have booked a couple of day cruises which should let me at least see some of the tall ships gathering for the event. I'll likely work in visits to a few other War of 1812 sites too.