So starved for Big City entertainment, we have braved some of the hottest streets of summer to suck up the goodies available here. My friends Julia, Ruth and Sally, who grew up in the nearby suburbs like Winnetka, conveyed enough of the thrills to make me dream about a trip to Chicago since college. The second largest city in the U.S., it feels quite different from NYC, in summer anyway. Perhaps it is the influence of Lake Michigan and the breeze that makes it feel more casual and beachy, where NYC just feels ugly sweltering this time of year. Both provide enough modern art exhibitions (SMART in Hyde Park, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), and The Art Institute) to overwhelm even the dedicated enthusiast of abstract art. (Who is the tall, goofy guy trying to blend in with the cartoon faces over his head at the MAC?)

Then there is the joy of catching the latest films (Woody Allen’s fascinating and sad, “Blue Jasmine”, showcasing a Bernie Madoff type widow descending into madness; Cate Blanchett is so great in this role, the audience suffers through every stupid decision she makes, just waiting for the bad consequence to follow, then digging herself deeper, popping pills and telling lies as her only treatment.  I preferred the John Cassavettes’  lovely and tragic “Woman on the Edge” with Gina Roland, as she was so enchanting and creative, trying to claw her way out of a depression in a family and community with no understanding of clinical depression. Both movies make us so grateful not to suffer from clinical depression, and to have built up a “Bank”, of loving and wise people, financial stability, and good health to endure great losses. However, we decided we needed an immediate alcohol injection at a bar with a view to “process” the film and our feelings.

We found it at a hidden gem hotel bar: The Holiday Inn! With floor-to ceiling windows on the 16th Floor, overlooking the River and the full moon over the top of  legendary skyscrapers, it was an extraordinary find with no crowd after work on a weeknight,  a killer fennel/radicchio pizza, and great, reasonably priced cocktails. It made up for a lousy deep dish pizza; “Lou Malinetti’s” (his dad Rudy started making deep dish at the original Uno’s restaurant) couldn’t touch our best Berkeley/Albany/San Francisco deep dish pizzas from Zaccary’s and Little Star. Go west young man, and learn how to make a real deep dish pizza with fresh local ingredients!

We also enjoyed the convenience of the “L” for getting around town, and our visit to one of the oldest Vegan restaurants in the U.S., founded in 1981:  the Chicago Diner in Boystown, all vegan, all the time, even before it became a hipster choice. Amazing Reuben sandwiches, “milk”shakes, and the best boneless Buffalo “Wings” (made from seitan).  Hey Vegans, bring your BBQ ribs cravings here!

My reading group assigned, “Devil in the White City” by Eric Larson, about 5 years ago. It showed the dueling architects’ roles. As the City had burned down in 1871 (except for the old water tower in the featured image), Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan (father of the skyscraper and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright) had a clean slate to work with in the historic constructions for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. It was also the story of America’s first serial killer, who lured young women looking for work at the Fair to his boarding house…with a crematorium in the basement…creepy…!

The 90 minute river tour by the Architecture Foundation must be delayed for cooler weather, as will our tours of the neighborhoods, with Chicago Bungalow and Prairie Style architecture. As it was still 87 degrees at 10 PM we bailed on the chance to dance with the local Tangueros and attend the Jazz Concert outside on the Terrace at the MC. However, we did appreciate the folks boogying with the goofy yellow spotted sculptures there, and shopping at the best Museum Store we have seen yet. We are committing ourselves to return to this wonderful city sooner than later, but NOT during historically hot summer days.

…and I always thought a Boilermaker was a whiskey shooter/cocktail named after the workers who stoked the steam locomotives with coal. It is a shot of whiskey dropped into a beer, and drunk without removing one’s lips from the glass, eg. chug-a-lug. Sounds like a college experience, but since underage students don’t illegally drink on college campuses and certainly not ‘party hearty’ shooters, it must be…of course…the locomotive itself!

Our pal Reg is a faculty member here in West Lafayette, Indiana and gave us the grand tour, coinciding with Freshman Orientation Week. 5500 Freshmen is a lot of goofy kids on a remarkably compact and walkable campus serving 40,000 students. College campuses go all out with a designated, “Office of the First Year Experience” to ensure new student success. You could see these kids were exhausted, and their student guides told us they kept plying them with free caffeine drinks to get them through all the activities. We overheard lots of chirpy cajoling, “Oh no, you can crash later, you don’t want to miss this!”  Perhaps they are resisting indoctrination into adult life, or maybe the Freshmen were just tired of the big noisy locomotive on wheels careening through campus with a loud steam whistle…I certainly was.

Many stopped to pet Lety, stating how much they already miss their dogs at home. Hey! Be the first in your dorm to get a dog!

I guess you have to do something splashy when you live in the same neighborhood as “Samara”, the most unaltered of Frank Lloyd Wright’s furnished and landscaped houses.

Samara is a stunning mix of Chinese and Modern architecture and Prairie Style interiors. Still, the Terracotta Warrior garden sculptures seemed a bit over the top. We liked however, the way it seemed to inspire the neighbors to move beyond woodland creatures, pink flamingos and trolls. We give the “Weird Garden Art Award”, to West Lafayette: from bronze and ceramic sculpture (the featured image, “Courting”), to topiary, and painted aardvarks, boas and gorillas set amid the roses in formal flower gardens. The Terracotta Warriors have met their match.

We are in town for the Indiana State Fair too. “Everything you can imagine fried on a stick” is the food magnet at the Fair, but Reg met her match with an “Amish Donut”. Sized like one of those blow up temporary auto tires, even the donut hole pictured below, is 3 inches across. That is just scary.

… but then again, there are Art Cycles (photo credit: Dr. Regena Scott) and other weird stuff. Get thee to your State Fair, wherever you are!

In Bloomington, Indiana, Steven visited the fountain he played in as a young child (age 3-7).  He lived in a residential speech training program for severely hearing impaired children on the campus at Indiana University. Nowadays, they wouldn’t institutionalize such a young child for speech training, but in the 1950’s that was the best choice available. Steven’s mother, a wonderful advocate for her hearing impaired child, moved the whole family up from Kentucky to be close by and to ensure her son’s speech therapy and lip reading training during these years. Today, Steven is grateful he got exactly the training he did, as he was able to mainstream in public school by first grade interacting socially with both speech, and with the aid of bilateral hearing aids.

We also walked on campus to the world renowned, “Jacobs School of Music”, to see where one of my son’s best friends since Kindergarten is studying Composition. Steven realized that the Jacobs School of Music Main Campus…has replaced his childhood residence. A deaf school replaced by a music school. That is a lovely kind of irony, knowing that both of these very smart boys (reading at age 3!) were getting life-changing training in the same spot beginning 55 years apart, one of them from a musical family, learning the theory of music, and one of them learning the music of spoken language, and both training to thrive in the world, to follow their dreams.

Both sides of the River have gorgeous falls. Clearly the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side are the most dramatic with a 2200 foot crest and a 177 ft. drop. At 700,000 gallons per second, the falling water creates so much mist and wind that the bottom of the Falls are completely obscured, and the mist wets you with rain well down river. Unfortunately, seemingly “Un-Canadian” in style, the  overwhelming and ugly tourist dreck on the Canadian side is a big drawback to viewing the Falls. We would not have minded a reenactment of the 63 year old  school teacher Annie Taylor’s ride in a bucket over the Canadian Niagara Falls, or the swims/dives of 10 other survivors. As two have died (a kayaker and a jet skier), your ride now would result in arrest when you resurface.

The Falls in New York are not as wide, with less water volume and mist, and leave the piled rocks at the bottom visible about 1/4 of the way up the waterfall, making our falls look shorter, and certainly less dramatic. However, we’ve got a really beautifully landscaped old state park on Goat Island, that allows you to scamper all over for birds-eye views of the Canadian horseshoe falls. Also, we’ve got the most awesome tourist attraction of all, and it beats the Maid of the Mist boat trip in all ways, as the boats are not allowed to approach close to the falls due to submerged rocks.

There is no better way to experience the force of the water than the, “Cave of the Winds Tour” in the New York State Park. It also costs 50% less than the boats and you get silly souvenir sandles to boot!

“Cave of the Winds” starts with the provision of souvenir sandles and ponchos, before an elevator ride 179 feet down to the base of the falls. The cave collapsed several years ago, and now there are staircases and platforms directly under Bridal Veil Falls. If you climb to the “Hurricane Deck”, you will stay less than a minute with the pounding of the falls on your back and the intense gale force winds created by the falls. You will get soaked if you go there, even briefly. Some silly people, eg. Sally (circled in the photo above) and a busload of visiting foreign students, stayed on the Hurricane Deck for half an hour. Sally huddled in place grabbing onto the rail enjoying the pounding “massage”, while the students danced like dervishes. Thus we found another very refreshing way to beat the heat on our travels this summer.

Steven’s pal Kate from 3rd grade, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame made Cleveland, Ohio a travel destination. We missed the Rock Museum as we arrived an hour before the Cleveland Browns game. Chaos and expensive parking made us choose pretty walks as the best way to experience Cleveland.

The Peace Garden and Labyrinth in Chagrin Falls (utilizing Kate’s design), and the “Metropark” system surrounding Cleveland with parks, bike routes, and waterfalls, was a far better choice.

On route to Bloomington, we took a lunch stop in the Columbus, Ohio “North High Street Art District”. There are some great murals.

We also spent a fantastic day with Steven’s cousins, Jo Ann (and her family) and Karen (and her husband) in Springville, Indiana at the family’s Red Horse Hollow. From the great meals at their sister Katy’s house in Florida, we knew to arrive hungry.  The gals (skinny, tall, and long-legged like all of Steven’s family) provided us with mountains of Bill’s delicious BBQ, “Mom’s Homemade” blueberry, and sugar cream pies, and too many sides, including fresh picked Indiana corn on the cob. The only sane thing to do was take a nap that afternoon but…Joanne’s five horses needed to be groomed and worked.

Easy choice:  sleep v. groom/ride/bathe horses. Afterward, I smelled deliciously of horse poop and horse sweat…Yippee!

The beautiful gray was my ride…sweet! We stayed in this lovely log cabin where the family even provided another five dogs to make sure we felt welcome!

There is nothing like swinging on the porch watching fireflies at night, and fawns at dawn. Check out the big Rottweiler mix snoozing through the fawns visit 15 feet away. If it wasn’t so much work maintaining a big spread like this, I would recommend we all just sit on a porch swing in Indiana and eat corn on the cob all summer.

I somehow mistakenly believed that Toronto was a mid-size Midwestern Canadian city, provincial in nature. I was surprised to find a booming, sprawling metropolis filled with new high rise resident towers and cranes atop steel carapaces all around the City, capturing the view over Lake Ontario. There is a wonderful mix of old and new, maintaining historic brick buildings at street level, interspersing modern sculpture in pocket parks and pedestrian walkways, and overshadowed by glassy towers including CN, at one time the tallest tower in the world. As you would imagine, the traffic is terrible due to construction and density. The other surprise was the cultural diversity in Toronto, especially showcased at the Caribana Festival. This is in no way like the U.S. Midwest; what was I thinking?

We walked the dog through a few Arts Districts in the City, finding sub-standard croissants and closed galleries on this civic holiday, so we bee-lined for the magnet drawing us to Toronto: THE BATA SHOE MUSEUM. We first learned of this museum in St. John’s, Newfoundland from the “Roaring 20’s” exhibit at The Rooms, where the gorgeous shoes popular with “The Flappers” were showcased.

The history of shoes at the Bata Shoe Museum starts with a casting of footprints (found by Mary Leaky in Tanzania) from the era of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, of whom “Lucy” (casting of skull shown below from the Signal Hill Museum in Newfoundland) is our oldest humanoid skeletal remains.

World culture expressed through footwear is the theme of the permanent shoe exhibit, exploring arctic, jungle, desert, and mountain applications, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, and focusing on decorative arts and function. The Northamerican Moccasin  exhibit showcased stunning beadwork.

All because Sonja Bata, after marrying a man with a shoe factory, traveled the world collecting shoes, tools, and documenting the craft of shoemaking in each culture, beginning with the Maasai in Kenya (featured image).

Starting from the first rubber soled mass production shoe, the same Keds we grew up wearing, and providing an alter for my worship: Roger Federer’s tennis shoes with the red clay stuck to them.

We really enjoyed the “Rise of Sneaker Culture”, an exhibit which persuasively showed the impact of hip-hop music on the shoe industry. The greatest focus was the fashion impact of the band RUN DMC which made unlaced white leather high tops de riguer, but the majority of the shoes were the Prada/Gucci/Jimmy Choo/Vera Wang designer versions of the sneaker.  It made me recall Carrie Bradshaw’s response to a robbery, where she was willing to hand over her jewelry, her wallet, her life, as she wailed, “Take anything you want, but p-le-a-s-e  don’t take my Jimmy Choo’s”.

These Prada “wingtips” are hilarious. It prodded us to enjoy trying on shoes in the museum “play area”. Phew! Steven finally found his blue suede shoes so we could dance out of Toronto with style!

 Nearby, we enjoyed a private tour of the ROADTREK factory in Kitchener, Ontario where our small, city-parkable RV was built. We expected a Detroit-style assembly line and instead found individual vehicles being driven from station to station. They are brought in as new cargo vans, and the first job is to replace the standard gas tank with a one liter tank, to decrease flammability risk in the small, open facility. Next, the top is peeled off like a sardine can, holes are cut for side windows and floor systems (think gravity based grey and black water holding) and then the 8 week building process begins: application of the aerodynamic tall roof, building and installation of the best cabinets in the RV business, and water/gas/electric/solar/propane/sewage system installation before painting and reinstallation of the standard gas tank. After final testing, it drives out for delivery as each RV is based on a custom order. We now understand why these rigs cost over $100,000 new, and maintain their value; the priority is to keep them light enough to give us the 17-21 mpg that we enjoy…with all of the comforts of home. We also enjoyed seeing the very secret “Prototype”…sleek. Needless to say, no cameras were allowed on site so we can’t spill the beans, but we will say, we drooled over the improvements.

Actually, 1865 islands. Formed from a precambrian rock bridge, Canada claims more of the individual islands.

 The USA claims more land area (some of the islands are quite large and have schools and businesses for year round residence) and more of the water surface in this part of the Saint Lawrence River exiting Lake Ontario. The First Citizens called it the “Garden of the Great Spirit”. The mob played cat and mouse with the Feds here during Prohibition as the Islands created countless places to hide the booze.

Many Manhattan celebrities had homes here including Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein and George Bold, the owner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Bold built a castle for his wife (a Tudor version of the Taj Mahal story) who died without inhabiting it. The castle below  is the smallest of the three structures on the island. We enjoyed a 2.5 hour boat ride to explore both the Canadian and American sides.

Also, Bold’s personal chef, Oscar, created the salad topping: Thousand Island Dressing. It is made with mayonnaise, chives, paprika, garlic, and salt and pepper. Chili sauce is then swirled across the top to suggest the sunsets here, and then finely chopped dill pickles are sprinkled over the top to suggest the 1000 islands. One of the best versions of this dressing is used as the “Secret Sauce” on In-N-Out hamburgers in California, a secret to their success. You can even order fries, “Animal Style” which means topping the fries with Thousand Island Dressing and freshly fried onions, and raw onions, way better than the Quebecois favorite, Poutine, which tops fries with gravy and cheese curds, and looks like vomit. I am sure reasonable minds can differ on the best way to mess with a french fry.

After a quick trip through Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, we reentered Canada below Montreal. Ycch…another perilous border crossing, and stupidly on a Friday night. Mainly Quebecois heading home, they brought us to a standstill for an hour. Passengers were out of their vehicles, picnicking, riding skateboards, and throwing frisbees and footballs across the freeway. The delay was made more tolerable by the antics of a wonderful Jack Russell Terrier who chased a speedy remote control toy car all over the center divide throughout the delay. I guess he thought it was a rat, and he did not give up. Tenacious critters, those terriers.

During our earlier crossing near Ottowa, the Canadian Border Authority stopped us for a “Customs” issue; they clearly thought we were drug mules and searched the Roadtrek carefully for an hour, but were very welcoming once the search was completed. This time they stopped us for an “Immigration” issue. The dialogue between me and the border agent went like this:

Agent (hereafter “A”): Why EVER would you stay in the Canadian Atlantic Maritime Provinces for three months?

Sally (hereafter “S”): We hate heat and humidity.

A: Why did you only return to the U.S. for 10 days?

S: Steven had business in California, and could not fly out of Canada on his expired U.S. passport.

A. What are your occupations?

S: I am a retired lawyer, and he is a retired engineer.

A: Are you carrying over $10,000 Dollars in Canadian currency into the country?

S: No. Four credit cards with $26,000 limits on each.

A: What valuable assets do you carry in the vehicle?

S: The dog. (He didn’t even crack a smile at this…)

A: What assets do you have in the United States?

S: We both own homes, and have investment portfolios.

A: What is the value of your homes?

S: (WTF????..No, we didn’t really say that, exercising great self control). $600,000 each. What EXACTLY is your concern here?

A: Clearly you are not coming here to look for work so I am concerned that you don’t have sufficient assets to support yourself….you know, to… to …SLEEP… in Canada. What is the source of your income?

S: We both have pensions.

A: (a long glare with narrowed eyes, and then….) Okay. You’re free to go. (and he never cracked a smile…)

We have pondered this interrogation and decided that we either look like bums and should clean the exterior of the van and the bikes, and dress up a bit before we cross the border, or more likely, we drive too small and old an RV, as we doubt that he would have such a conversation with the driver of a 40 foot long RV worth $150,000. Perhaps it is an anti-California bias, or he hated my blue toenail polish and Steven’s pierced ear. Actually, he as much as told us we were suspicious because…who would leave the great weather of California to stay amid the icebergs, rain, and fog in the Maritime Provinces? That would be us, your stealth camping worst nightmares. We don’t expect this level of suspicion when we cross into Canada to enter British Columbia and Alberta during the Autumn. They are way more used to West Coast Weirdos…they have a few of their own.

It was an epic battle, like Good v. Evil:  Sally and Steven v. Ben and Jerry. Trying out a vegan diet, we met our nemesis, real ice cream. Let’s face it….soy ice cream sucks. So does coconut, almond and every other non-dairy version we have tried. I will tell you that we had to rely on the psychological defenses of 1) Denial (“it won’t taste as good as you imagine…”), and 2) Sublimation (“that bike ride out the Marble Causeway to the Bike Ferry is going to be awesome!”). We won…this round anyway. However, Ben and Jerry’s, Hagen Daz, Double Rainbow, Magnum, and Godiva have not left the planet. The next squirmish is on the horizon…

Although Ben and Jerry’s founded their business here in 1978 in a former gas station, there is more than ice cream to enjoy during a summer visit. The dining tables on Church Street pedestrian mall are bursting with diners. Everybody is happy. They probably just came from the Waterfront on Lake Champlain where people practiced dance routines, martial arts, 2 on 2 volleyball, frisbee golf, and all manner of ball games. We joined the happy bikers who rode the 24 mile roundtrip out the Marble Causeway. It seems to come to an end at a waterway with boat traffic moving between different parts of the large lake. But, no! Friday through Sunday you jump on the BIKE FERRY for a 60 second ride to the next island, South Horn and more bike trails. How cool is that? Even our international biking buddies Ricka and Dave have never ridden a designated bike ferry. Hey guys, add this to your life list!

We have managed small day hikes on parts of the Appalachian Trail (the “AT”) as we have headed up the East Coast from Georgia this last year. Sometimes we hiked in snow (Virginia), sometimes without a trail while walking on the same Appalachian Mountain ridge in Newfoundland, and finally, the windiest part of the trail, at the top of Mt. Washington, in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We met amazing hikers, starting on their last leg as they head up the AT to Northern Maine, having started in Georgia early last spring. These guys caught all of the long cold winter this year, every bit of it. We don’t get to complain.

 Mt. Washington is one of the most extraordinary places on earth. The highest recorded surface wind speeds were measured here on April 4th, 1934:  234 m.p.h. Mostly the wind is about 35 m.p.h., but over 100 days/year the wind reaches hurricane velocity, over 75 m.p.h. Although it is only 6,000 feet in elevation at the top, it sits in a “Perfect Storm” location. Treeline on the mountain is 4500 feet, whereas treeline in the Colorado Rockies with lots of 14,000 foot peaks, sits at 11,000 feet. It snows every month of the year here…except July 2013. We hit the mountain on the last day of July, and experienced the very rare, perfect weather. As the mountain is obscured with clouds 60% of daylight hours, we really lucked out! Maximum visibility allows views to Mt. Marcy in Maine and peaks in New York. The snows create drifts that tower over 18 stories high in the Tuckerman Ravine, and routinely scoured the asphalt off the access road so that parts of the road are never paved anymore.

Until 13 years ago when Everest ascents became even a newbie climbers’ reality (…along with their frozen coffins), Mt. Washington reported more fatalities each year than Everest. This year two fatalities occurred to experienced ice/rock climbers, while 30 successful rescues kept the fatalities down. The weather is so nasty that typical hiker rock cairns placed within eyesight of the last cairn, are placed only 8-10 feet apart here, anticipating near zero visibility. The experience up here was chilling, both in teaching respect for severe elements, and literally chilling as the Peak was a brisk 44 degrees for us, while the bottom of the mountain, was 81 degrees. I guess we just found another great way to beat the East Coast heat and humidity in summer.

We did a hike on the Flume Trail and visited The Basin in Franconia Notch State Park. It was a pretty walk in the woods, by a steep rushing creek carving deep vertical walls through the rock, until it screamed through polished banked corners, like waterpark rides. A nice stop but we couldn’t stop looking up to see if we could catch a last glimpse of Mt. Washington.