We're Home!

DAY 48: Just a quick note to say that we are safely home. We got in late Monday night. Everything looks good at home, and we had a wonderful trip - much to be thankful for! I don't have the internet access at home that makes posting convenient and I'm about to turn in my computer to the shop for a check-up. but when I get a chance I'll post some photos from the last week of our trip. Love to all!  Larry and Ellen

Minerva, OH

Day 44: We're in Minerva, OH tonight: the Palmentier Motel, which calls itself a Retro Motel and it is old-fashioned, but also very nice. The room is huge and nicely appointed. We drove from Elgin, IL today and we'll be at Swarthmore, PA tomorrow night.  We're doing fine and I'll try to elaborate with photos and more description when I get the chance.

Beautiful Highways

DAY 39: In Indianola tonight. Today we drove from Ainsworth, NE along Route 20 to U.S. 275, stopped for a picnic out of our food box at a park in Wisner, NE, down to Blair, NE, across the wide Missouri over an historic bridge, to Missouri Valley, IA,  up the Lincoln Highway (U.S. 30) for a bit and along a scenic byway to Elkhorn, IA and then down to Atlantic, IA and across IA 92 to Indianola. What a beautiful drive through the Loess Hills of Iowa, through Danish villages, by many corn and soybean fields (sadly, some heavily damaged by drought), and a huge windfarm. A lovely day.

Picnic in the park

Danish windmill in Elkhorn, IA

"The Little Mermaid" replica in Kimballton, IA

Iowa countryside

Windfarm near Atlantic, IA

Vintage postcard of the Blair Bridge over the Missouri

Back on the road

DAY 39 (I think): We're in Ainsworth, NE this morning. We were in Yellowstone N.P. last Thursday and Friday (no WiFi). One thing we did in Yellowstone was to hike up Mt. Washburn (10,250 ft.). We didn't get to the top, but almost. We climbed probably 1000 feet anyway. Not too bad for a couple of oldsters.  And then on Saturday drove the Chief Joseph highway to Cody, WY and on to Buffalo where we spent Saturday night. Sunday we drove into South Dakota, making brief stops at Jewel Cave N. M. and Wind Cave N.P., both very interesting (we didn't actually go into the caves - next time!), and then on to Ainsworth - a beautiful drive.

Here are some photos from the past few days:

Bison right by the car

Bison at a distance

Butterfly up close

Fireweed on Mt. Washburn

Jewel Cave (not my photo)

From Mt. Washburn

Fireweed and bleached trees on Mt. Washburn

Longhorn sheep on Washburn

Two ravens at LeHardy Rapids, Yellowstone N.P.

Last day in Alpine

DAY 34: Today was our last full day in Alpine. Tomorrow we leave for Yellowstone Park where we'll have two nights at Roosevelt Lodge, our favorite place in Yellowstone. It will be sad to leave Max, Paul and Jenny. But there is some hope that we'll be getting together again either here or in Vermont for Ellen's 70th birthday coming up in November. We'll hope!!

There's been some talk of trying to connect with Ryan and Alicia McQuen (whom I married on July 13th) as they drive west to Everett, WA and we drive east.  Not sure it will work, but we might cross paths in Montana somewhere and maybe at least wave at each other. Alicia has landed her "dream job" with the Snohomish County Public Health Department as a Disease Intervention Specialist in her field of tuberculosis. Congratulations Alicia!! Big changes in their lives! Good luck to them.

Ellen and I took a walk up Granite Canyon in Teton N.P. yesterday. It wasn't a long hike - 3 miles r.t., but that was about right for me. It was pretty warm, but not too bad. We saw an unusual wildflower on the hike which we later learned was called pinedrops. 

Pinedrops.

Afterward we went to Victor, ID and Ellen had her favorite ice cream milkshake -a huckleberry shake at The Emporium, made with huckleberry ice cream and real, wild huckleberries. Yum!!
 
Not sure when the next post will be -- I think Yellowstone is basically a cell phone and Wi-Fi free zone.  Yay!

It is also a TV-free zone for the most part - so goodbye Olympics. Hello bison, elk, wolves, beautiful scenery, streams, late summer wildflowers, and maybe even a bear!

Huckleberry Milkshake

The Emporium, Victor, Idaho

Paul's work

DAY 33: Tuesday, August 7th we drove up to Jackson, WY and visited Paul's worksite. Paul works as a site manager for a company called OSM (On Site Management). He is currently managing a multi-million-dollar home construction job, a modern concrete and steel home outside Jackson near Wilson, WY. He is the guy who is "on the ground" as they say today, there at the site day after day, making sure everything is done the way it is supposed to be done. He interfaces with the architects, all the sub-contractors, workers, his own management team and the clients. It is a huge, complicated job which requires incredible attention to detail, constantly evaluating the process and updating it, often drawing plans which the architect has failed to provide, solving problems that arise on the spot, etc. We were impressed and Ellen is pretty proud of her son! It seems to be the perfect job for him which fully utilizes all his experience building two houses, but also uses his organizational skills. Here is a photo of an architects rendering of the final product, a shot of a set of plans, and a current on-site view of work in progress.

Artist's rendering of house

Site plan

Work in progress

Homebodies

DAYS 28-30: These have been lovely days just staying close to "home" at Paul and Jenny's. Max has been a homebody too - we asked him what he wanted to do most and he said, "just stay home and play." So that's what we've done, and boy have we enjoyed that.  We've had some lovely meals on the back deck in the evening - both Jenny and Ellen have prepared some fine food.

We went to the Alpine Farmer's Market, which is a small affair compared to Brattleboro, but for us it featured The Day Lodge Farm Stand - the "Day Lodge" being the place where Jenny works. Today we drove to Etna (4 miles) and got a creamie - Wow!- that's been the pace.

 Ellen and I have enjoyed short walks up the hill behind the house. Also, all along, I've been working hard on the "Tolles Project" -- transcribing the 278-page manuscript that Ellen's father, Frederick B. Tolles,  created back in the late 1950's - a history of early colonial America that has never seen the light of day before - but my hope is that now it will, at least for the Tolles family. I finished Chapter 3 today - about the Puritans and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Very interesting! 215 pages down, only 63 to go!

We've watched quite a bit of the Olympics too. 

Tomorrow we'll take Max to church at the United Church of Star Valley, where he LOVES the nursery playroom, and we like the pastor,  Rev. Steve Crittendon. We're scheduled to stay in a cabin in Yellowstone N.P. Wed. and Thurs. of next week, and then we start the long trek home.

"Home" in Alpine, WY

Jenny, Ellen, Paul and Max at Market

Just after a berry-yogurt popsicle

Max & Truck

Back in Alpine

DAY 27: We're back in Alpine after our trip to Boise and Salem. All went well. Monday, in Boise,  we participated in a conference sponsored by the Idaho End-of-Life Coalition (a.k.a. the Idaho Quality of Life Coalition). Ellen and I  spoke briefly as a part of a presentation by the Boise Hospice Singers, and we joined in the singing. The event took place in the student center at Boise State College, so we got to see a bit of Boise State.

Yesterday before leaving Boise we visited a Human Rights Memorial dedicated to Anne Franck which has a large number of quotations carved into stone drawn from many individuals and traditions  - all lifting up the importance of human rights and dignity.  We were glad we made the visit. Be sure to revisit the Thomas Condon post - I've added some photos.

The trip back to Alpine yesterday was hot! We have been seeing temperatures consistently in the 90's over the much of the trip. But as we came into Alpine, the temp dropped to 70. Last night we had very nice air.  It is bright and sunny today but the air is still low humidity and cooler.

Idaho Human Rights Memorial

Sample quotations

Thomas Condon

DAY 22: Friday, July 27th. We're in Salem, OR. We drove here yesterday from Boise, ID and on the way, we passed the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, and made a short stop at the visitor center - the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center. What a fascinating place! I learned there about Thomas Condon, who is probably the only Congregational Minister who has a National Park Visitor Center named for him.  He was born in Ireland in 1822, came to America with his family, graduated from Auburn Theological Seminary in NYC, was ordained a Congregational minister in The Dalles, OR, and served a church there. But he had a passion for geology and paleontology and began exploring fossils in the area. He was the first to discover the extensive fossils along the John Day River, said today to be the largest fossil deposit in the world. He began sending fossils to scientists back east and eventually left the ministry to become a full-time paleontologist, was made Oregon State geologist and the first professor of geology at Oregon University. He went on to publish a book, Two Islands and What Came of Them about the two major mountain ranges in Oregon which he believed were separated millions of years ago by an ocean which resulted in separate evolutionary development of the flora and fauna, and thus a completely different fossil record. What an interesting man!

Thomas Condon Center

DAY 23: Sat. July 28th. Yesterday, Roger Hull, Ellen and I took a nice walk in Minto Park in Salem while Bonnie Hull and J.E. Seibert biked, and then we all ended up for lunch at the Minto Island Growers Farm Stand where we had a great lunch. Good food! All fresh and organically grown.

Ellen, J.E. Seibert and Roger Hull at Farmstand

 Then we headed into downtown Salem to explore "Play Me--I'm Yours" piano festival -- upright pianos have been distributed in a dozen outdoor locations in Salem (and in other cities all over the world) and anyone can just sit down and play. We went to one on a pedestrian bridge over the Willamette River and had a little sing-along with another family - the dad played the piano better than any of us did.

Play me! I'm yours!

After that we visited the place where Bonnie has a little "studio" space along with several other artists and then went to a new coffeehouse run by the Salem Alliance Church (a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church). They undoubtedly would not agree with Thomas Condon's views of evolution (as biblical fundamentalists, they undoubtedly believe in a "young" earth), but their lattes are delicious and beautiful.

Piece by Manuel Izquierdo

We also tucked in a visit to the Hallie Ford Museum at Willamette University - a museum our friend Roger Hull had a great deal to do with creating. We love going there. In a newly-opened gallery we saw a sample of an Oregon sculptor's work - Manuel Izquierdo -  who will be featured in a major retrospective next January that Roger is curating.  It will be exciting.  

Bonnie Hull's "My Mother's Hand" wall

 

Beautiful Latte

Idaho Shakespeare Festival

DAY 19: I'm going back and picking up on an earlier post when we were in Boise ID. Tuesday, July 24th was the day we did an informal workshop with the Boise Hospice Singers and that evening we went to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival Theater, not for Shakespeare but for Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid. As I mentioned earlier, it was an unusual, "over the top" interpretation and performance, but memorable. When I later went online and read about the original play, I realized that this production held closely to Moliere's characters and plot, but it must have taken great liberties with the script. As the publicity phrased it when describing what ages would be appropriate for this production, it was said it was for any age that liked "potty humor, yucky medical procedures and sexual innuendo." It was fun in a bizarre sort of way. Anyway, here are some pictures from that evening:

Ellen, Susan Gelletley and Larry at a picnic before the play.

Idaho Shakespeare Festival Theater

The set for Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid

 

Boise-Salem Loop

DAYS 16-20: At the moment we are in Boise, ID. We left Alpine Monday noon or so, arrived here Monday at about 7 in time for supper with Susan and Christian, a lovely meal of delicious beets, salad and grilled sausage. Yesterday was a full day - Ellen and I met with a group of Boise Hospice Singers folks - about 16 or so - and led an informal workshop - our 4th annual workshop with them! There is always more to talk about as a group evolves. Then in the evening we went to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival performance of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid. This was not a traditional performance in any way - it was creative, bizarre, over-the-top in many respects, but quite memorable. That was preceded by a little picnic on the theater grounds. On our trip over to Boise on Monday I once again read aloud from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience which we are finding to be a fascinating book. I picked it off the shelf just as we were leaving Vermont and I'm glad I did. Last Sunday we went to the United Church of Star Valley, and found that the pastor was on vacation, and no one filled in with a sermon. So it was a short service. But on Monday we listened to a tape of a Guilford service from July, 1995 and that was wonderful in every way. Shirley's children's story was What the Angelic Lobster Taught, which Peter Amidon had just told at the Memorial celebration last May 26th when I released I Invite the Children to Come Forward, so we got to hear the full service: Shirley's sermon on Heaven - which was a really good sermon, and a men's choir singing a lovely arrangement of Shall We Gather At the River? What a treasure those tapes are! Tomorrow we'll head for Salem, OR and be there a couple of days.

Lying Low

DAYS 14 and 15: Well, yesterday and today I haven't done much. Wednesday night I had a terrible night, not much sleep. Something was going on with my body but I couldn't figure out what. Thursday I was wiped out, light-headed, etc. At first we speculated that it was a reaction to the altitude (5640ft.), but I finally decided it might be an allergic reaction to something, who knows what? So I took a Claritin tablet and pretty soon I was feeling better. I had a better night last night and today have felt fairly normal. We just took a little walk uphill - and that went ok. It is still hot - in the 90's - but it does cool down at night and of course the humidity is low. Despite not feeling like fighting dragons, I have been able to get some work done on my project of transcribing the Tolles manuscript. I've finished two chapters now, a total of 113 pages in the original MS. It is very interesting, and amazingly, in the chapter on the Virginia colony I learned a lot about the background of my own ancestors - the Persons family line - who emigrated to Virginia in the 1650's and were yeoman planters who were involved in "Bacon's Rebellion" -- a revolt of dissatisfied smaller planters against Governor Berkeley. How neat is that? We have two more days here, and then we're doing our annual loop to Boise, ID and Salem, OR, starting next Monday.

Arrived safe and sound

DAY 13: We have arrived in Alpine, WY. We got here a little before Paul returned from work and also before Jenny and Max got home from work and day care, respectively. So we sat on the swing on the porch and just enjoyed the cooler, drier air. Our trip today began in Riverton. The Motel 6 room was a change from what we have had thus far - much more modern and spare in design than Super 8, although it had all the amenities. We liked it. We walked all around downtown Riverton looking for a place to have breakfast, and finally found the Cove Restaurant.  It was only a block from the motel - we had come the long way round. I'd give it a "B-."

The drive from Riverton to Alpine starts out in pretty flat, bleak country, but that changes. The hills rise up, the rock turns red.

Around the Togwotee (TOE-go-tee) Pass you start getting vistas like the one on the left. Then suddenly in the distance is the Teton range, below.  One never grows tired of looking at the Tetons, even when going through a long area of road construction, as we were. When we got into Teton National Park we went to Jackson Lake Dam and found a nice, shaded picnic table where we ate out of our food box from the car. We took the scenic route along Jenny Lake and on into Jackson where we stopped for ice cream. And then it was less than an hour's drive to Alpine.

Not long after we arrived, Paul, Jenny and Max came home and there was hugging all around and a lot of catching up to do on the news. It's good to be here.

Wedding Reception addendum

Katie & Betsey at the Royal

There are a few features of Ryan & Alicia's wedding reception I haven't shared yet. When you entered the lobby of the reception hall at the Four Rivers Environmental Center (FREC), there was an unusual guest book. It consisted of an old Royal standard typewriter, and you were invited to type your greetings to the couple the old fashioned way. Ryan had borrowed my brother's old Royal for the purpose. It needed cleaning but he couldn't find anyone who would clean it, so the keys tended to stick. There were instructions as to how to use it, which included the sentence: "If you don't know how to roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter, ask someone who does." That gave us oldsters a chuckle.

Bottles and candles

When you entered the hall, one of the first things you noticed was that all along both long sides of the hall were wine bottles with flowers in them, separated by votive candles. Ryan & Alicia, and their families,  had been saving empty wine bottles for two years for this purpose! It was a striking decorative motif. Another very unusual aspect of this reception was that the night before, the FREC had suffered some kind of disaster, I was never clear just what, which prevented the use of the toilets. So they had to scramble to bring in portapotties. That created a scene which none of us had ever seen before: a portapotty with a sign on the door: "Bride Only."

We tried, in vain, to imagine the bride trying to go into this in her wedding gown. And speaking of wedding gowns, Alicia had found and reserved a gown she loved at a bridal store in Elgin two years before the wedding, and made a down payment. The store had a policy - if the gown wasn't picked up in 30 days, it was gone, no refund.  Alicia explained that she was in grad school in Little Rock, AK, and couldn't pick it up in 30 days. They said they would hold it, and they did - at least they did as late as May of this year when Alicia called from LR and said she would be arriving in June after graduation to pick it up and they said, "Fine, it's here," But when she actually arrived to pick it up, she was told it had been given to charity!  This was a month before the wedding!  You can imagine her feelings. Happy ending: she found another gown she liked and they applied the deposit to it (but only after her father threatened some Mafia tactics!).

Another unusual feature: the bride cut the cake at the beginning, before the meal. Otherwise, that moment was pretty traditional. The meal was vegetarian: fruit salad, pasta, veggies and cake (the bride and groom are vegetarians). There was a lemon theme: When you entered, you picked up a whole lemon which had pinned to it your name and table assignment. On the tables were lovely bouquets in pitchers filled with water and lemon slices. It all took a lot of planning and imagination. If they put the same amount of planning and imagination into their lives together, they should have a fun ride.

Finally, I got this very lovely picture of Katie and her mother outside in front of a field of wild flowers:

My beauties

Hard night, hot day

DAY 12: Last night in Mullen, NE was sort of a tough night. Our motel was right by the railroad, and coal trains went by all through the night, blowing two blasts on the whistle as they went through town. Between that and an eccentric AC unit, I didn't get much sleep. Ellen woke up this morning with a splitting headache. So we got off to a slow start, but we did have breakfast at Big Red's across from the motel where coffee is $.50 a cup! How rare is that?

I started out driving since Ellen didn't feel quite up for that, but as time went on she felt better and by the time we had gotten to Fort Robinson, a State Historic Site in the NW corner of NE, she was feeling ok and able to drive. We had a picnic lunch at Fort Robinson, which is an interesting place and we learned it has reasonably-priced rooms in an historic building that was a barracks, now turned hotel. More interesting than a motel -  maybe we'll stay there on some future trip. From there it was just - drive through dry and barren country to Riverton, WY which is where we are tonight. It was in the 90's all day. The entire midwest and west that we have traversed is suffering from heat and drought. But as we go along I am reading aloud William James'  Varieties of Religious Experience (1907) which is a classic, a fascinating book, and amazingly modern and pertinent in its tone and outlook. I'm also reading aloud Arthur Ransome's We Didn't Mean To Go to Sea, in the Swallows and Amazons series. Fun. We are also listening to Teaching Company tapes on the topic Why Is There Evil? So far we've had lectures on the idea of evil in the Sumerian texts Enuma Elish and Epic of Gilgamesh, Greek mythology, Genesis, Job and certain Hebrew prophets. It's raised a lot of questions which we get to discuss,  and the miles flow by.

Simpson College visit

Day 11: Monday, July 16, 2012. We spent last night at a motel in Indianola, IA so that I could get an early start at the Dunn library at Simpson College. I was interested in the "Craven Room" at Simpson - an archival room dedicated to an alumnus of Simpson College, Avery O. Craven, an historian of the ante-bellum South.

Why?  Well, I'm involved in a project relating to Ellen's father, Frederick B. Tolles, an historian of colonial America, and more specifically colonial Quaker history. He taught for many years at Swarthmore College and was Director of the Friends Historical Library there. I'll paste in here part of an email which I wrote to the curator of the Craven collection. It turned out that the person I needed to talk with in order to get access to what I wanted to see was on vacation, and the staff that was at the Dunn Library today wasn't able to help me access the collection.

Here's what I said:

"The project I've embarked on has to do with a projected 5-volume History of the United States that was to be published in the late 1950's by Alfred A. Knopf. Each volume was to be 150,000 words. Dr. Tolles was contracted in 1954 to write Volume I: From the Beginning to 1790; Dr. Craven was contracted to write Volume II: 1790-1850. Kenneth Stampp was to do Vol. III; Thomas  Cochrane Vol. IV, and Walter Johnson, Vol. V. Johnson was the editor of the series. Dr. Craven was contracted to deliver his manuscript to Knopf by June 30, 1957.

Dr. Tolles started his writing, but was prevented from completing it by a brain tumor. He went through several surgeries and other treatments, requesting several extensions in the hope he could complete the work, but illness finally necessitated that he resign the contract in 1963. He never recovered from his illness and died in 1975. So far as I can determine, the 5-volume series was never published. Obviously, this had some impact on the other authors.

The unpublished and unfinished MS of Dr. Tolles' work is in his papers in the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore and I have a copy. I want to publish it for Dr. Tolles' family (my wife has two siblings and there are several grandchildren, etc.), with an Introduction explaining the background of the MS. His MS is 278 pages, typed, double-spaced. It's about 70,000 words, so he was able to complete almost half of the work before he had to give it up. It is beautifully written, despite his illness.

Which brings me finally to Dr. Craven. What I am wondering, and hoping, is that there might be reference to Dr. Craven's involvement in this projected Knopf History of the U.S. in his papers - particularly in his correspondence. I can imagine there could have been  an exchange of letters between him and Alfred A. Knopf, and also Walter Johnson, the editor. Perhaps there was also correspondence between him and Dr. Tolles. There might also be some reference to his contribution to the project - did he complete a MS of Vol. II? If so, what happened to it? Did he work it into other publications? What impact did this unfinished project have on his life and work?"

Ellen and I were able at least to go into the Craven Room for a few minutes. It contains Dr. Craven's personal library pertaining to the ante-bellum South, a fascinating collection of books, plus many other memorabilia from his life. It is a lovely room, one that it would be a pleasure to spend time in.

I have brought the Tolles MS with me on this trip and I'll be transcribing it whenever I can find a chance to do so. If I'm lucky, I may be able to have a first draft of it by the time we get home.

Here are photos of the two men discussed above: Dr. Avery Craven and Dr. Frederick Barnes Tolles.

Frederick Tolles

Avery Craven

   

After Simpson College we drove Route 30 across Iowa through Onawa, where I used to live, and on to Mullen, NE. (On Route 2 in central NE). The Congregational Church in Onawa, which my father served in the 1950's, is now the Onawa Bible Baptist Church. That is a fairly recent development.  However the other church he served in nearby Blencoe, is still U.C.C. I lived in Onawa the summer of 1954, between college and seminary, assisting my father in the churches. I helped assemble a Moehler pipe organ in the Onawa church that summer. I wonder if it's still there?

Catching Up

DAYS 5: Tuesday, July 10th, we traveled from Wooster, OH to Bartlett, IL. We started the day checking out the campus of the College of Wooster, which is very handsome, as is the town itself. We then drove across Ohio on Route 30 and into Indiana, heading for Huntington, IN and a Roadfood restaurant, Nick's Restaurant. We got there at 2:10pm only to discover that it had closed at 2pm. However, the door was still open, and when the owner learned we had come from Vermont to get a meal there, she invited us to stay and eat. So we did, and had the house specials - pork tenderloin sandwiches and sugar cream pie. From there it was on to Chicago area and we arrived at the Hochbergers at about 7:30pm.

Jerry and Gretchen ("Maggie")  Hochberger

DAY 6: Wednesday, July 11th, I met with the bride and groom, Ryan and Alicia, in the morning and we spent about three hours together going over the wedding ceremony and then going to the First Congregational Church in Elgin to look over the chapel where the wedding was to take place, and work out all the logistics and little details that go into a wedding.  Then I went to see my brother Stewart and we had lunch together. We went to see Stewart's friend Carol who fell and broke both of her ankles and is in a rehab facility. She is plucky, and determined to get back her mobility and independence. Then Stewart, Ellen and I had supper at Paul's Family Restaurant, a popular Elgin eatery.

DAY 7: Thursday, July 12th. For me this was a day to get ready for the wedding - write my homily and print out a final version of the ceremony itself. That took most of the morning and early afternoon. Then in the afternoon, there was a wedding rehearsal. We couldn't hold it at the chapel, because the church wasn't open and they didn't want to have to pay extra rental to have it opened just for that. So we held it at the home of one of Stewart's  children, and simulated the space in the chapel - and that worked fine. Several folks were not able to be at the rehearsal, however. So it was sort of an approximation, but well worth doing anyway because we worked out a lot of wrinkles. There were ten people in the bridal party plus two children (flower girl and ring bearer), so there was some choreography to work out. After the rehearsal, Stewart came over to the Hochbergers and joined us for a nice supper. Everyone wanted to hear about the rehearsal. The run-up to this wedding has provided much dinner-table conversation.

The McQuens - Ryan & Alicia; Dennis and Suzanne

DAY 8: Friday, July 13th. The big day. The wedding wasn't until 1:00p.m. so I had the morning to put the finishing touches on everything. Then I left early for the church and helped with final preparations there, giving instructions to people who missed the rehearsal,  Everybody was on time, the wedding started on time, everything went smoothly, it was lovely.The bride wept copiously, but her Maid of Honor had brought a good supply of tissues. Nobody fainted. Nobody dropped a ring. There was a small glitch with the "Unity Sand Ceremony" - Ryan and Alicia each had a bottle of sand - different colors - and they poured them into a common container to symbolize the blending of their lives. Well, the sand just didn't want to come out of Ryan's bottle. I think the humidity had affected it. But it finally worked. Their lives will be blended.

Rev. Crockett and Ryan McQuen

 The reception started at 6:00pm at the Four Rivers Environmental Center near Joliet, IL - a 1 1/2 -2 hour drive (or more depending on traffic). The entire bridal party went in a limousine; the rest of us were on our own. My daughter Betsey, and granddaughter Katie drove up from Columbia, MO for the wedding and arrived just before the ceremony. So we went down to the reception in their car, after going back to Bartlett to get a snack. They were going to stay at Maggie and Jerry's house too. We encountered heavy traffic and heavy rain on our way to Joliet. But the site of the reception was lovely, and decorated beautifully.

Reception Hall

Ellen, Katie and Betsey at the Chapel

DAY 9: July 14th. This was a take-it-easy day after the wedding. Betsey and Katie hung around till late morning and we had a good visit. I went to see Stewart  and we ended up taking him and niece Becky to dinner at Bahama Breeze.  Noisy ambiance but good food!

Stewart and Becky

DAY 10: We took Maggie and Jerry to breakfast at Richard Walker pancake house (the famous Dutch Baby!), and then took off for Iowa. We stopped to see Betty Remley in Anamosa, IA  on the way. What a woman! She's in her nineties, as sharp as a tack and with recent hip surgery she's spryer than ever. She led the choir when I was in high school in the 1940's!!! Tonight we are in Indianola, IA. I'm doing some research in the Simpson College Library tomorrow.

DAY 11: I went to the Library, but the curator of the Craven papers was on vacation. I got her email address and I hope to set something up for the return trip. The Dunn Library at Simpson is very attractive and the Craven Room is is especially so. We'll be heading to Nebraska today.