Midwest Guest

Photo Friday

Spotting a few cacti during our trip to South Dakota’s Badlands surprised us, but the driest and most desolate areas of the Badlands National Park have a stark beauty all their own. Pausing while looking at an expansive plains view where I could almost see the earth’s curvature at the horizon, I looked down at my feet and spotted this crazy quilt pattern formed by the parched ground.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008

Mischievous spirit at Pilgrim House Inn

“Your room is haunted!”

The occupant of Room 11 looked blearily startled at his breakfast companion’s greeting.

Room 11 was one of a block of rooms reserved at the Pilgrim House Inn for a group of friends visiting Newport, Rhode Island for a special event. Room 11’s occupant may have briefly wondered if partying with the group the previous evening led to an unpleasant morning after, complete with reports of seeing and hearing non-existent things.

Or maybe he dimly remembered an encounter with the spirit of Jessica, the little ghost girl who is the Pilgrim House Inn’s most storied guest.

Jessica’s mischievous spirit supposedly haunts this charming bed and breakfast inn located in Newport’s Historic Hill district, drawing visitors and ghost hunters anxious to catch a glimpse of her.

The three-story home, built in the late 1700s as a single-family residence, sits tightly tucked into a row of buildings of similar vintage.  The home later saw use as apartments for Navy families living in the historic harbor town and as overnight accommodations for dockhands, merchant marines and visiting fishermen.

The inn’s current keepers, Barry and Debbie Fonseca, took over ownership of the bed and breakfast in 2000 and became keepers of the house’s ghostly legacy.

I asked Barry about Jessica, and he said he’s yet to encounter her spirit. However, he said a group of “professional ghost hunters” visited the inn during January 2008 and reportedly detected some sort of image on the inn’s stairway.

Author John T. Brennan shares several stories of Jessica sightings in his 2007 book, Ghosts of Newport: Spirits, Scoundrels, Legends and Lore.

Brennan said Jessica seems to relish playing practical jokes like buzzing intercoms in empty rooms, playing a music box in the middle of the night or slamming a clothes dryer door and turning the dryer on. One group taking a Ghost Walk tour of the town reported seeing a little girl in an old-fashioned dress standing at the foot of the inn’s stairs, when there were no children reportedly staying at the inn that evening.

Most activity seems to center on the third-floor Room 11 and the second-floor Room 8. Read some of the guest books in various Pilgrim House Inn rooms to see guests’ reports of experiencing Jessica’s presence.

We didn’t encounter Jessica during our five-night stay at the inn, but we did encounter many of the Pilgrim House’s most numerous guests: the innkeeper’s rabbit collection.

Barry told me that his father-in-law, in an effort to draw attention to his house painting business during a slow time, drew bunny outlines on buildings as he painted them. The house painter’s daughter, innkeeper Debbie Fonseca, began collecting rabbits. The rabbit collection quickly multiplied (no surprise when it comes to bunnies, I guess) until bunnies now occupy nearly every corner of the inn.

A bunny guarded the door to our room, bunnies sat in the quiet reading nooks on the inn’s second and third floors, another sat on our bed and bunnies proliferated throughout the house.

Does Jessica play with the bunnies?

They weren’t telling, and it was difficult to imagine seeing a ghost as we enjoyed our breakfast that sunny September morning on the inn’s third-floor deck, with its beautiful view of Newport Harbor.

Meanwhile, Mister Room 11 didn’t seem to have any tales to tell, which disappointed his friends. But other Pilgrim House Inn guests and visitors believe that the spirit of little Jessica is very real and wonder if that little shadow they glimpsed on the stairway could be the inn’s most notorious, and perhaps most well-loved, guest.

© Dominique King 2008

Ghosts of Punderson Manor

Visiting Punderson State Park on a sunny day may bring visions of swimming in the lake, golfing on an 18-hole course, playing tennis, fishing, hiking or enjoying a family picnic. However, some visitors venturing into the park’s stately manor lodge on a dark evening see more sinister visions as Punderson Manor ghosts reportedly roam the property.

I’ve roamed the property many times while attending a yearly writers’ conference at the manor lodge, searching out some of the corners and crannies reportedly haunted by Punderson’s most troubled apparitions. I’ve yet to spy a ghost, but I still enjoy hearing the puzzling tales of Punderson’s past residents.

The lodge, originally built as a 29-room home by Detroit millionaire Karl Long, sits on the shores of quiet Punderson Lake as park of Ohio’s Punderson State Park, a few miles east of Cleveland.

Lemuel Punderson settled on the property during the early 1800s, building a distillery, grist mill and home near the lake. The park’s namesake died under mysterious circumstances, with one of the more colorful rumors involving his reportedly committing suicide by drifting into the lake in a bathtub, pulling the plug and drowning.

W.B. Cleveland and his family next occupied the land, before its sale to Karl Long.

Long began building his Tudor-style mansion in 1929, but the stock market crash of that year led to a sharp decline in his fortune. Long died among unsubstantiated rumors of suicide and leaving behind the unfinished hulk of a home.

The State of Ohio acquired the property in 1948, eventually renovating the mansion and opening the property as a park and vacation resort in 1956. A second renovation in the early 1980s resulted in the addition of a new wing of hotel-like rooms in the lodge and conference center.

Park rangers, lodge employees and guests report numerous unexplained sounds and apparitions in the older portion of the lodge.

I’ve always stayed in the newer wing of the lodge, but I make it a point to ascend the lobby’s spiral staircase and prowl around the common areas of the original wing during each stay.

Laughing children playing on the spiral stairs, sometimes accompanied by a woman in mid-1800s clothing or a rush of cold air, occasionally appear to visitors and workers during the night. More disturbing visions like a man hanging from a chandelier in the dining room, the sounds of moans coming from supposedly unoccupied rooms or the uneasy feeling that something is sitting on the bed next to them sometimes spook visitors and park employees.

I always visit the supposedly spooky narrow hallway leading to the site of some of the most notorious ghostly tales, sit a spell in the small library of the old Tower wing and sometimes visit the library or a small lounge in the wing with friends to share a post conference bottle of wine.

While I’ve yet to spy any of Punderson’s uneasy spirits, I remember one of my fellow conference attendees reporting the unsettling experience of sensing an unseen visitor in her room one evening.

Punderson’s paranormal reputation makes it an interesting destination for those seeking supernatural experiences, like this geocaching travel bug we left along a hiking trail in the park. But the lovely lodge and park is also enjoyable for those who aren’t so easily spooked or sensitive to the site’s ghostly history.

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

This shot comes from our tour of the Charles W. Morgan, America’s last existing wooden whaling ship, which is now part of historic Mystic Seaport.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008

The 30-minute vacation

Getting away from it all can be a tough proposition when real life gets in the way, but a quick trip to the George W. Suarez Friendship Woods and Nature Center in Madison Heights, Michigan is one of my favorite destinations when I only have a few minutes to spare from my work week.

The center is a few miles from my home in suburban Detroit, but strolling the tranquil trail system there makes me feel as if I momentarily stepped into a northern Michigan woods.

The Detroit area has many nice nature centers, but Madison Heights’ center is one of my favorites because it retains much of its natural ambience while providing an urban oasis that is easily accessible with an impressive menu of programs and amenities.

I regularly use the 1-1/3 mile trail system for a quick mid-day respite from the office or for a short after-work walk. The asphalted trail makes it accessible for wheelchair users or baby strollers, yet offers a more comfortable walking surface than hard concrete. Rustic log benches stationed at short intervals along the trails provide a place to just sit and enjoy the natural surroundings.

Visitors can enjoy the trails seven days a week, usually from 8:30 a.m. until sunset, and year round for walking or for cross country skiing when it snows.

Quiet mornings draw birders to the trails, scanning the treetops for migratory birds passing through the area or some of the resident birds who make their home in the center year round. Over 100 different types of birds visit the area during spring and fall migrations, and there is plenty of avian action throughout the year, according to a birding checklist at the center’s Web site.

Geocachers will find several caches hidden along the center’s trail system. We found our first cache at the nature center when we started geocaching nearly two years ago.

A log cabin houses displays featuring animals common to the area like frogs and snakes, an indoor “tree house” and a gift store, as well as a small auditorium and meeting areas for the center’s educational programs. The cabin is open six days each week, closing on Mondays.

The center’s staff is mostly a volunteer force working with a full-time coordinator and part-time naturalist. The 37-1/2 acre nature center and woods opened in 1996 and bears the name of a long-time Madison Heights mayor and county commissioner.

Organized center programs include guided nature walks with the naturalist, sessions for scouts earning merit badges, night sky observation with a local astronomer, holiday programs like visits with Santa Claus, hot dog lunches where volunteers do the grilling on the center’s outdoor deck, maple syrup tapping, honey harvesting, movies and birthday parties.

Homeschooling parents find the center a particularly valuable resource with classes tailored to provide homeschooled children with lessons in a variety of natural science subjects. Recent homeschool classes at the center include an insect workshop, a session about reptiles and amphibians and a class about Michigan’s endangered wildlife.

The nature center is a great place to go learn something new, but I still enjoy it best as my own little 30-minute vacation from hectic urban life.

© Dominique King 2008

The road less traveled

Robert Frost knew the benefit of accepting the adventure of traveling the road not generally taken, and heeding Frost’s advice led us to a more interesting trip than simply taking the most-traveled tourist route through South Dakota’s Badlands.

Travelers often enter Badlands National Park by entering the park’s main loop road from one of the exits along Interstate 90, maybe after a quick visit to the kitschy Wall Drug. Given our aversion to using major freeways when we have the time and a choice, we pulled out our trusty South Dakota DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer and looked for a non-Interstate way into the park from where we were staying in Custer, SD.

Our map showed the jagged red arc of Sage Creek Road running off Highway 44, just east of the town of Scenic, and through a major portion of the park to connect onto the main loop road. This route probably doubled our mileage within the park, but we found taking this scenic and well-maintained gravel route to be the best choice when it came to wildlife viewing and photo opportunities for visitors driving through the park.

The route began through the beautifully beige plains where herds of bison quietly grazed and a few hearty clumps of black-eyed susans and cactus plants punctuated the plains with a dab of color.

Seeing this transitional area, where the plains gave way to the starkest terrain of the Badlands, was the real benefit of taking the sparsely traveled Sage Creek Road into the park. We saw a greater variety of wildlife, undisturbed by tourist traffic, and caught a glimpse of a more varied palette of terrain than the main loop offered.

The plains bustled with activity as we traveled through Robert’s Prairie Dog Town, a massive community of the cute and convivial animals. The National Park Service Badlands Visitor Guide even advises tourists taking the main road to take a 10-mile round trip “side trip” off of the loop to visit the prairie dog town.

We reluctantly left the prairie dog party and continued along Sage Creek Road to hop onto the main, paved loop through some of the Badlands’ most famously barren, yet beautiful, landscape.

Gently muted color becomes more varied, the landscape becomes increasingly arid and wildlife becomes scarcer along the main route. Impressive rock formations and rocky landscape, much of it displaying subtle color variations stratified by time and erosion, offered the more familiar view of what many people think about when they think of the Badlands.

Rock formations create a sort of visual history of the area written on the walls in stripes and shades of red, grey, yellow and beige. Each layer represents an epoch, tracing events stretching back 70 million years.

The Ben Reifel Visitor Center, named for a former Congressional Representative and Lakota Sioux, is located near the entrance of the main loop road at Interior, SD. The center and the park Web site offer publications, information and programs for visitors interested in learning about the area’s unique geology and wildlife.

And so we ended our trip where many visitors start, picking up a couple of postcards and books at the visitor center so we could relive our great day in the Badlands until our next visit there.

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

Here’s a photo I snapped when I took a bunch of pictures at Historic Jacob Hill Inn, a beautiful bed & breakfast inn where we stayed during a recent trip to Seekonk, MA. I walked down one of the stairways in the inn’s main house and found this batch of glass bottles displayed on a window sill there.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008

Sleuthing with Nancy Drew

Several generations of girls enjoyed the sleuthing adventures of the fictional Nancy Drew, but did you know that the author of the first Nancy Drew book lived and worked in Toledo, Ohio?

Finding the final resting place of the author, Mildred Wirt Benson, took just a little sleuthing of our own while participating in the high-tech treasure hunt known as geocaching.

Finding out-of-the way places off of the beaten tourist path is one of the things I like most about travel, and geocaching is like having access to knowledgeable local guides at nearly any destination you visit.

Geocaching even helps us find interesting places near home. One of our more interesting finds was a cache in a local cemetery memorializing the efforts of a group of African-American “Buffalo Soldiers” who served during the Spanish American War. We learned a bit about the courage these men displayed, and the hardships they endured, as we read the cache description and made the find by visiting their graves.

The Nancy Drew and Buffalo Soldier caches are just two of more than 650,000 caches hidden around the world and registered at www.geocaching.com, and some of the nearly 200 caches finds we’ve logged since taking up geocaching early last year.

Geocaching is similar to letterboxing, which uses clues hidden in stories to lead seekers to hidden caches.  Geocaching is basically a treasure hunt where cachers use computers and Global Positioning Units (GPS) to find caches hidden by fellow hobbyists.

Letterboxing is more than a century old. Geocaching, because geographic coordinates and modern technology lead players to caches, is a 21st century hobby with the first geocache coming into play during the year 2000.

I thought geocaching sounded like fun after reading several articles about the hobby. When Tim mentioned buying a GPS as we planned a road trip out West, we decided to buy it and try finding our first cache.

We quickly located an ammo box hidden in a local nature center, logged our first find and became hooked on the hobby.

Caches take many forms. Some caches are waterproof containers like ammo boxes purchased at a military surplus store and filled with small, inexpensive trinkets. Other caches take the more challenging form of small magnetic boxes or containers barely larger than an eraser on top of a pencil. Some caches have no physical form at all, instead leading players to a specific location where they need to answer questions about the place before receiving credit for the find.

Geocachers also take many forms, with the hobby drawing a variety of players that include couples, families, retired folks and school or Scout groups. Some players enjoy solo caching. I cache as part of a two-person team and find most cachers I’ve met cache as teams or families. The hobby is family-friendly, and I’ve seen a lot of kids on the cache trail and at caching events.

Even as caching nears just its first decade in existence, the geocaching network includes many local organizations, like our local southeast Michigan group. Meeting other cachers at local events like picnics, dinners or camping weekends is just another aspect of the hobby’s fun.

Want to do some sleuthing of your own? Some resorts or outdoor outfitters offer rental GPS units for those who want to try the hobby before making an investment in equipment.

We’re happy with the Garmin 60CSx GPS we purchased at REI. Garmin and other companies sell units to fit various needs and budgets, and we found it helpful to consult the staff and look at various units at our local REI.

© Dominique King 2008

Exploring Mystic Seaport

Enjoying a lobster roll sandwich and a beer on a seaside tavern’s patio may seem like a curious way to study history, but it proved to be the perfect way to end our historical adventure at Mystic Seaport.

Schaefer’s Spouter Tavern, named for a tavern in Melville’s Moby Dick and serving a lunch menu reminiscent of fare at a 19^th-century inn, is but one of Mystic Seaport’s village of restored and recreated buildings.

The historical complex at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport reminded us of Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford in Dearborn Michigan. The Henry Ford, especially in the indoor museum, emphasizes Detroit’s automotive industry, but Mystic Seaport emphasizes New Enlgand’s seafaring background.

Like Greenfield Village, Mystic Seaport hosts a variety of structures illustrating the lives and times of people who lived there. We visited businesses like the doctor’s office and drug store and the village printer, as well as homes where families lived and crafted quilts, woven rugs, blankets and other items.

The jaunty and somewhat wistful sound of an old folk song drew us into the Fishtown Chapel, where an interpreter sang sea shanties while explaining their history aboard the large sailboats. Traditional shanties provided more than entertainment for hard-working sailors. The songs provided rhythm that helped coordinate efforts of workers completing complex team tasks involving a boat’s rigging, which our interpreter illustrated by pulling an imaginary rope as we sang along in time to her efforts.

The seaport somehow survived our singing, and we moved on to tour some of the village’s boatyards and nautical restoration projects.

Mystic Seaport’s Preservation Shipyard includes a spacious mezzanine with the best vantage point from which to watch workers using historic methods and tools to preserve and recreate some of history’s best-known and -loved sea-going vessels.

One of the shipyard’s best-known projects may be a re-creation of the Amistad. The original Amistad schooner served as the scene of a slave revolt. That infamous incident and subsequent Supreme Court case played an important part in the abolitionist movement in the United States and became the subject of a Steven Spielberg film.

The re-created ship varies a bit from the original schooner and is the subject of a display at the shipyard. While the Amistad freedom schooner was not at the shipyard during our visit, we were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of it earlier in the week at a brief stop in New Haven, CT.

We stopped by Mystic Seaport’s maritime galleries, where we found a fascinating exhibit about Captain George Comer’s pioneering observations of Hudson Bay Inuit traditions and culture during the early the 20^th century, as well as a collection of beautiful and ornate ship figureheads.

No visit to a seaport would be complete without getting out on the water, would it? A short cruise aboard the coal-fired steamer Sabino showed us the view from the water of many Mystic Seaport landmarks. The Sabino celebrates its centennial in 2008 and is a National Historic Landmark.

Being out on the water was a cool respite during the hot, humid day of our visit. Now it was time to visit the pub and enjoy that lobster roll!

© Dominique King 2008

Photo Friday

Baseball season draws to a close, and this cat seems a little forlorn as he looks at an empty baseball diamond in Franklin, Michigan.

I grabbed this shot with my trusty little Canon point-and-shoot camera on the way home from a recent visit to Franklin’s Cider Mill.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2008