A Vermont Tale

It's raining here in Lake Lure again today which prompts me to begin the tale of my September ride to Vermont, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island...the Maritime Tour.  I have two riding buddies, Ron and Jim, who still must work for a living, and therefore can not often take extended time off for a long ride.  We usually manage one 9 to 16 day trip together per year.  On the rare occasion when they can manage two weeks off, we generally head out west.  In the past we've visited many of the western national parks, including Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Capitol Reef.  This was a one-week-off year, so we had to stay closer to home, and decided on Vermont as the destination.  The wives would fly to Burlington, rent a car, and rendezvous with us at Mount Snow, where we would all spend three nights and take some day trips around the area.  Why Mount Snow?  Because the Concours Owners Group held their National Rally there last year and we had all read an article about it in Rider Magazine.  Vermont has an abundance of beautiful back roads and quaint villages where you can visit cheese makers and maple syrup producers and sample their wares.

Ron and Jim and I left Jim's house in Pounding Mill, VA on Friday morning Sept 7 and began making our way towards southern Vermont, sticking to the many scenic back roads in VA, WV, PA, and NY, passing through county seats with populations measured in the hundreds.

For example Craig County, VA has a population of 5,200 and New Castle, the county seat and one-and-only town in the county, has a population of 150.

one really nice road and riding area was PA State Rd 44 through the Tiadaghton State Forest west of Williamsport. We stopped at McConnell's Country Store and Fly Shop in Waterville where Ron was fascinated by the stuffed boxing raccoon...and he has the gall to give me a hard time about Little Buddy.

The National Taxidermists Association Hall of Fame and Museum is in nearby Haneyville, Pa.

We arrived at The Grand Summit Hotel at Mt Snow on Monday at about 6 pm.  The girls arrived about an hour later.  They were already partied-out from the two nights on their own in Burlington.

Ron was ecstatic to see Little Buddy again.

Tuesday dawned clear, bright, and warm, and we took an all-day circle-ride through the Vermont countryside, stopping at covered bridges, cheese factories, and famous estates.

We watched Vermont cheddar being made at the Grafton Village Cheese Company.

Lunch was at the historic Marsh Tavern in Manchester where the fledgling Vermont government used to hold meetings during the Revolutionary war.

After lunch, we rode a few miles down the road to Hildene, the summer home of Abraham Lincoln's son Tod Lincoln.

The valley views from Hildene's mountain perch were quite nice...no doubt the reason Tod Lincoln chose this location.

After Hildene, it was back to the Grand Summit for a picnic supper of Vermont cheese, sausage, and other goodies collected on the day's ride.  On Wednesday we visited Bennington and Arlington. Penny and I had stayed at the Four Chimneys Inn B&B in Bennington on a previous motorcycle trip in 2003. Our first night there, a Tornado crossed Lake Champlain from New York and took dead aim on the Inn, decimating the beautiful old oak trees surrounding the Inn. A photo from 2003:

The Inn today:

The Walloomsac Inn was an important stagecoach stop in Bennington dating from 1771 and had many famous visitors in its early years, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The Inn still stands today as a private residence of descendents of Walter Berry who purchased it in 1891.  The current condition of the Inn would not lead one to imagine the importance of the building to early Bennington and the early colonies.

After a hearty lunch at Madison Brewing Co on Main St in Bennington, we rode up to Arlington to see the Norman Rockwell exhibition housed in the Sugar Shack.  The owner was very personable, and regaled us with stories about Rockwell's years in Arlington. His father had been one of Rockwell's models for some of his famous paintings.

Where the syrup is made.

A new $60,000 maple syrup machine.

It was getting late by the time we left The Sugar Shack and headed back to Mt Snow. Dinner Wednesday night was at West Dover Joe's which was about the only thing still open, but turned out to have excellent food. Wednesday was our last night at Mt Snow.  On Thursday morning we parted ways...the girls drove back to Burlington to catch planes for home, Ron and Jim headed south towards home to go back to work on Monday.  Since I'm retired and carefree, I pointed my front wheel north and headed for Nova Scotia for another ten days of riding.

The Trenary Home Bakery Then And Now

We ate breakfast at the old Pacific Hotel in Chatham, then rode twelve miles south to Trenary where my Mom's brother Jorma Syrjanen had Ruth's grandfather, Oscar Suvanto, build the Trenary Home Bakery (THB) in 1928. That's the original bakery above with typical winter snow for that place and time.  Ruth has a copy of the original agreement between Jorma and Oscar to build the bakery and sell it to Jorma for $1,000.

Jorma ran the bakery until his death in 1940.  His widow, Elsie, then kept the bakery going for as long as she could manage, with help from her sons, my cousins, Donald and Leo.  She sold the bakery to the Hallinen family in 1950.  The THB is still in business in Trenary.  Among the large variety of baked goods that have been continuously produced there since 1928 is the hard cinnamon toast called Trenary Toast, the recipe for which was brought from Finland by Grandpa Gust when he immigrated in 1913.  This unique toast has the desirable quality of a very long shelf-life.  It can be kept for months without special preservation requirements.  For this reason, it was a favorite staple on sailing ships in days of old. The THB has a website from which you can order Trenary Toast today and have it delivered to your door by Fedex. This is the toast link .  During our visit, I ordered four bags of toast to be shipped home.

The bakery today has a new sign painted by co-owner and baker, Subi Hallinen.

My cousin Donald has the original sign mounted on his garage in the Town of Rock, 18 road miles south and west of Trenary. A picture of that is included below.

On the way into Trenary, we stopped at the Mathias Twp Cemetary north of town to visit the Syrjanen family plot. Gust, Saime, Jorma, and Elsie are all buried there.

Grandpa Gust's burial with my mother, Aina Ellen, standing between her brother Jorma and the minister, and Elsie standing beside Jorma with son Leo standing in front of her. Donald wasn't yet born and my parents weren't yet married.

We left Trenary about noon and rode over to Rock to see my cousin Donald and his wife Dottie. I first met Donald and Dottie nine years ago, and this is only the second time I have seen them. Thanks to the efforts of Ruth and Mark, Donald is now in possession of the original Trenary Home Bakery sign created by his father. This photo was taken by Mark a few years ago.

Ruth and Dottie on the front porch with one of Dottie's Bambies.

Donald had some old albums with photos I hadn't seen before. This one shows my mother, Aina Ellen, kneeling in front of her mother, Saime, in front of my mom and dad's first home in Sturgis, MI.

Another old photo of Donald's. My dad, my mother, her mother, and her sister-in-law Elsie, Donald's mother, in front of the Sturgis house.

 Donald and I stayed up late that Tuesday night talking about family and how he and I are the only two left of our generation of Syrjanen decendents. We made plans to get together this winter in Florida. I think we can both feel the clock ticking.  I departed early Wednesday morning, heading west and following the western shoreline of Lake Michigan down through Wisconsin.

I pulled into a county park south of Marinette for one last photo of Old Blue and Lake Michigan and then headed south as rapidly as I could since I had to be home in Lake Lure the following day.

I made it to Champaign, IL that night, and pulled in our driveway about 6:30 pm Thursday night, tired but content after a satisfying ride with no mishaps.  Our family and friends began arriving the next day for the Lake Lure Labor Day weekend bash.  The Trenary Toast that I ordered when we were visiting the bakery arrived the same day as our guests and was a big hit for breakfast.

Gitche Gumee And Some Family History

It's still raining so I'm still writing.  In the last post, I rode across the Mighty Mac at noon on Monday 8/27 and stopped at an observation tower just west of St Ignace to take a picture of the bridge.  My next stop was another couple of miles west on Highway 2 at Lehto's Pasties for lunch. Many believe that Lehto's makes the best pasties in the UP.  You can't eat there...they don't even have a picnic table, but a half mile to the east is a roadside park with tables, toilets, water, and a view of the lake.  They make one kind of pasty at Lehto's, containing beef and potato, and it is large and very good.  I sat at a picnic table in the park looking at the pasty and thinking there was no way I could eat it all, but once I got started I couldn't stop until it was all gone...and then I licked the paper.

I left the park full and satisfied and continued westward on highway 2 to highway 77 north, to 28 west into Au Train, a small town on Lake Superior, twelve miles west of Munising. A little west of Au Train on Au Train Bay is where my foster cousin Ruth and her husband Mark purchased a "camp" a few years ago.  The camp consists of a two BR cabin and a large out-building where they store all manner of vehicles and equipment.

I should explain "foster cousin".  My Finnish mother, Aina Ellen Syrjanen, was brought to the UP by her mother in 1920 at age 10.  Her father Gust Syrjanen preceeded them by 7 years and operated  a bakery in Marquette and later in Chatham.  When their mother died young, Ruth's father, Paul, and his sister, Signe, were partially raised by my grandparents and my mother.  Ruth and Mark, who were both raised and live in Florida, have taken a keen interest in the Syrjanen family history, and have done a tremendous amount of research including two trips to Finland and many many trips to the UP culminating in the purchase of their camp where they now spend summers.  They now know a lot more about my mother's family than I ever did and probably ever will. I love getting together with them and learning more about the Syrjanens. This is a shot of the Lake Superior shoreline that lies just beyond the trees in the shot above.

Monday evening, we drove a couple of miles east on highway 28 to eat at the Brownstone Inn which is also right across the street from the lake and has been in operation since 1946.

The dining room is rustic and the food is good.  I enjoyed the Lake Superior White Fish.

The current owner is jolly fellow Jeff Van Bremen.

The bar is both rustic and cozy, just the way you want it in the far north woods.

Tuesday morning, we headed about 10 miles south to Chatham, where my grandfather's second bakery in the UP was located. Before leaving the Lake Superior shore, I stopped to look at a cabin my Uncle Jorma used to rent as a summer getaway.  Current rent is $1,000 a year if you are interested.

The shortest route to Chatham from Jorma's cabin is south on Rock River Road, a beautiful gravel lane through the north woods.

The current population of Chatham is about 230.  The entire village burned to the ground in 1925 with the exception of two brick buildings...the Pacific Hotel, shown here, and another building across the street.

Today the hotel operates as a restaurant, and that's where we ate breakfast.  I had "Fish In The Boat", Lake Superior lake trout with fried eggs and hashbrowns, yum yum.  Here's an old photo of the original Pacific Hotel.

My grandfather's bakery was one of the casualties of the fire. This was the original Chatham bakery.

And this is the bakery after the fire. That's Grandpa Gust Syrjanen 2nd from the left.

The bakery in Chatham was rebuilt, along with most of the rest of the town, and operated as a bakery for several more years, but has since been torn down.  Gust died in 1933 at age 65.  His son, my Uncle Jorma, built a bakery in 1928 in Trenary about 12 miles south of  Chatham.  That bakery is still in operation and ships "Trenary Toast" nationwide.  That story coming in a future post.

A Sturdy Stuff Tradition And The Mighty Mac

I left Dowagiac, MI Sunday afternoon without a definite destination in mind.  I knew I wanted to be in Au Train in the UP on the shore of Lake Superior sometime Monday afternoon, so I needed to cover part of that distance Sunday afternoon.  I made a quick stop at an old classmate's house to give him a photo of our young grandson, playing with a Sturdy Stuff Toys farm tractor and trailer.

I found Steve mowing his grass. He and I went to school together from 1rst grade through high school, and then even on to college at Michigan State. In grades 1 through 8, we attended Baker, a one-room country school near our homes in rural Van Buren County. He and I were always the only two students in our class.  

Steve's mom and dad were farmers, but they also made Sturdy Stuff Toys...wooden toy tractors, trucks, trains, and even boats. They sold a lot of toys to local kindergartens. As a kid, I had just about every Sturdy Stuff Toy in the catalog. The "toy factory" was in the barn.  During summers as a young boy, I used to help make the toys, doing whatever a young boy could safely do...mostly sanding.  When our son Michael was born in '77, Steve's folks gave him an Oliver 70 tractor and trailer which he played with for many years, and which I still have, although it is sorely in need of restoration.  Many years later, after both his parents and the company were long gone, Steve took me to the barn and dug out a brand new Oliver 70 tractor and trailer and handed them over in the event that Michael ever had a son.  Well, Cameron is now a year-and-a-half old and is enjoying his tractor every bit as much as his dad and granddad once did.  He makes a very realistic tractor sound as he pushes it around.  How do they learn that? It must be in the DNA.  

I left Steve and headed west about 20 miles to Lake Michigan and rode the Blue Star Highway north through South Haven, and Saugatuck, and then jumped on 31 to get through Holland, Grand Haven, and Muskegon.  North of Muskegon, I was planning to hug the shoreline on the two-lane back roads and visit Silver Lake where Penny and I honeymooned  back in 1966. But, 20 or so miles south of Silver Lake it began to rain steadily.  So I stopped in the middle of Michigan farm land, suited up, abandoned the narrow back roads, and hastened eastward to the 4-lane, limited-access ease of Highway 31. Back on 31 I hustled as quickly as conditions would allow to the next significant town, which turned out to be Ludington.  Ludington is the departure point for the ferry across Lake Michigan to Manitowoc, WI.  I figured there would be plenty of motels in Ludington to service the ferry traffic, and I was right. When I passed a sign that said Food, Wine, and Lodging, I knew I had found my place for the night.

The food part turned out to be breakfast only, so I still had to find a restaurant for dinner, but as it turned out, Scotty's was a good restaurant with good seafood very nearby.  I enjoyed one of the best seafood pasta dishes I ever ate...loaded with shrimp and scallops in a white wine, lemon, garlic sauce.  The wine part was interesting.  They ran a tasting room in the lobby for a local Lake Michigan winery, Fenn Valley.  I paid a couple of bucks to taste a variety of reds and whites, and bought a bottle of the Meritage to take to the UP.

Monday dawned clear and bright.  I needed to make my way to I-75 which leads to the Mackinac Bridge, the gateway to the Upper Peninsula.  Roads in Michigan are laid out on a grid to the extent possible.  Getting to I-75 in a scenic way involved riding a series of intersecting east/west and north/south roads.  I rode 10 east out of Ludington to 37 north to Mesick, then 42 east to 131 in Manton, and took 131 north through Fire Lake to Mancelona.  A lot of these roads were through the north woods, and I kept an eye out for deer.  In Mancelona I turned east on County 38 which runs eastward over to Otsego Lake, and may be the only twisty road in Michigan.  For a few minutes as I approached the lake, I could have been on a  curvy NC mountain road.  After picking up I-75, it was a straight shot north to The Bridge.

There was no place to get a good shot of the bridge before entering it, but luckily, the right lane was closed for construction and I could pull over between the cones and stop for a photo.  Fortunately, no cops came along, as they would probably have frowned upon that maneuver.  The bridge, which is 5 miles long and 200 feet above the water at mid-span, was opened to traffic in 1957.  The towers rise 550 ft above the water, and the water is almost 300 ft deep in the middle.  I hear that you don't want to ride it (or even drive it for that matter) on a windy day. There is a story about a Yugo, driven by a young woman, plunging off the bridge in 1989, with high winds being a contributing factor:  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-10-03/news/8901190020_1_suspension-bridge-accident-car .  You can have a state worker drive your car across for you if you are too panic-stricken to do it yourself, but I doubt that you can get them to ride your bike across for you.  Crossing the "Mighty Mac" is something every motorcyclist should experience.

St Ignace is the town in the UP that anchors the northern end of The Bridge.  Route 2 leads west out of St Ignace, closely hugging the Lake Michigan shoreline.  About a mile out of town, an observation tower rises from a small parking area between the road and the lake. For $1 you can purchase the privilege of climbing 200 steps to the observation deck.

I didn't know how many stair-steps there were when I started, but I do now. I'm not sure I would have climbed it if I had known at the start. But if you persist, you are rewarded with nice views of the bridge and the lake.

Next episode...riding the UP from the one great lake to another.

A Reunion Of Oldies But Goodies

I've been riding this summer, but not taking the time to write about the trips. It's a rainy day here in Lake Lure...a good opportunity to post some words and photos from the summer's travels that are now becoming bygone memories.

2012 marked the 50th anniversary of my graduating class from Dowagiac Union High  in southwestern Michigan.  Our 50th class reunion was held the weekend of Aug 25.  It was a good excuse for a ride to experience a healthy dose of Pure Michigan.  My plan was to attend the reunion and then do a Lake Michigan circle tour which would give me the opportunity to visit some cousins in the UP that I rarely get to see. Wife Penny drove to Dowagiac for the reunion, then headed back to Lake Lure on Sunday to prepare for Labor Day weekend and the large family gathering that has become an annual event at our place.

It was great seeing a bunch of old classmates, several of whom had never before attended a class reunion. I think there is something special about reaching the 50 year mark that moves people to want to get together with old friends from their youth.  In any event, it was good to see some folks that I haven't seen in 50 years.

Here are a few shots of happy 68-year-old faces...people who were glad to see each other after 50 years.

Roger and Jack

Henry, Walt, and Earle

Larry and Mary Anne

Barbara

Butch and Ron

Liz, Suzie, and John

Penny and me

We had reunion activities Friday and Saturday. On Sunday we spent time with Penny's brother Bill, his wife Barb, daughter Morgan, and son Mike.  Mike was involved in a violent head-on collision back in May and was newly out of the hospital and living at home with Bill and Barb.  He was just relearning to walk with the aid of a walker and was wearing a "halo" with a shoulder and chest harness and pins into his scull to immobilize his head and neck due to the severe damage to the neck muscles and tendons suffered in the accident along with a severely smashed pelvis and leg.  His X-rays show a bewildering maze of pins, plates, and screws holding his pelvis and hips together. The latest word on Mike, just four weeks after our visit, is that the halo has come off and he has been able to trade the walker for a cane.  Way to go Mike.  What a tough guy.

On Sunday afternoon, Penny headed south for NC and I headed north for the UP.  The next episode will be devoted to my ride around Lake Michigan and my visit with "Yooper" cousins.