A Swiss Summer

A common theme on the road-trips this summer : Small & Swiss.

Thanks to a recommendation, while we were in Buckhannon on B's academic business, we took a switch-backy mountain drive up to a small swiss village in the WestVirginia hills. It is known as Helvetia. I do mean small - according the 2010 census the population is 59.

The town has a homey restaurant called the Hutte House:

Inside it looks like a lived-in treasure shoppe:

The owner proudly displays her West Virginia Business College degree:

You get a plate of cubed baby swiss as an appetizer and beer is served in giant cold ceramic steins:

After our late lunch we went for a stroll down the street. As in THE street. 

Settled in 1869 by some Swiss folks that just wanted to MYOB!

A beautiful flower bed on a pretty little bridge over a quaint little crick:

The town convenience store and post office - we were told that the woman who owns the restaurant is also the town postmistress:

The reason I love Swiss villages is because most buildings are called HAUS:

On my way back from Michigan I got off the highway after seeing the small hand-painted billboard that touts the quaintness of the swiss village of Berne, Indiana. I'd seen it on my trip a couple times and always wanted to stop and if there is one lesson I can teach y'all after my couple decades on the road - if you want to stop: DO IT.

I'm glad I did especially because my timing was perfect. The mechanical people and glockenspiel in the historic (looking) clock tower were about to do their noon dance!

If you don't have photosynth for your phone - get it. It is the most fun panorama app ever. 

The city center is quite fancy for a town of just around 4,000 people.  Here is a set of swiss arms:

The entertainment began at noon. 

I don't know anyone who doesn't like a good glockenspiel and mechanical figures coming out of a clock at noon. Here's a taste:

And here is proof that there was popcorn:

The tour bus:

In town, all the stores and buildings look like swiss chalets. Even the McDonalds!

Here is the fire station:

If I could have stayed two more days I would have been able to attend their swiss festival. I can only eat so much dense cheese and cheese soups in July. I will just have to come back another time.

Cave Jams*

If you don't have photosynth, you are just a slave to your camera's regular old pano function. 

Mammoth Cave!

They call it a grand, gloomy and peculiar place - my kind of people. 

I wanted these to look dark and creepy in order to give the impression that we were NOT in a group of 115 people, 70 of them using flash cameras to take a picture every five steps. 

*New drinking game: Watch The East and drink every time you hear the word jam.

The Olds Days

On my last visit to Michigan we went to the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum in Lansing.  Roughly 31% of my childhood/coming-of-age memories are somehow associated with the Cutlass so I was so excited to check this museum out. 

It may have been around awhile but we learned from a volunteer that the museum was under new direction and that they have hopes of it being of a Henry Ford level, By the way, if you haven't been to either of these museums you must go. If you don't know the history of the automobile you dont know America. But that is easy for me to say because I was raised in Michigan where everyone was somehow connected to at least one of the big three and I knew how to identify the production year of a camero from its headlights by the time I was ten. Thanks big bro! I have continued to develop this skill and hope to make it into a gameshow someday. 

The R.E. Olds Transportation Museum is on the Motorcities Passport Program, so that makes it even better for a National Park Passport enthusiast like myself. 

The place itself is lacking a bit of narrative (I like a museum map and a brochure/bio) so you never really get the whole story of RE's life or how things, like the cars, came to be and how things came to and end (Oldsmobile stopped production in 2004), but what it lacks in story, it makes up for in metal:

I spared you some of the photos of the earlier cars and skipped straight to the muscle. Grand National! Glory days!

I loved the group photos of all the folks that worked on the lines:

I wonder what happened to this rebel dude wearing the Lou Reed shirt?

To top it all off, the gift shop had vintage postcards from GM dealers:

*I like to imagine that 72 cutlass smashing a fixed-gear bike. Wait, I am totally kidding. I love bikes very much. 

Starting From the Top Trip Review: Skies

Survival Skills

I haven’t been posting much because I have been on the road, but don’t worry – I am ok thanks to finding this invaluable survival pack:

The kit doesn’t come with instructions but you can pretty much gather from the photo on the display that you can survive anything, including the scratchy trees and aggressive wildlife of the Australian outback, using a four-piece manicure set.

As long as I make it through the next twenty-four hours without having to file a kangaroo to death, I’ll be back in the regular world soon, loaded with stories of Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky and all the blurry road signs in between.

Made It All These Miles

Got in way, way later than I anticipated. Wouldn't have been a big deal if my night vision hadn't been impaired by bug-guts-on-the-windshield glare for the last hour.  Forgot about the time zone change, ran into a couple traffic jams, and some surprising slow fast food service in southern Indiana.

All of that will get you to a place called Pure Michigan.