Road to the Source

Our caravan trip down the Mississippi River would begin in northern Minnesota. We gave ourselves a couple of weeks to make the 1,500-mile trip from Virginia, visiting several cities and town along the way.

Pittsburgh, PA

We'd been to Pittsburgh about 15 years before, but not since. We were able to visit with Sue and Peter Seiff, former work colleagues and friends from Doug's days at American Management Systems (AMS), who we hosted at the Ciaowagen since they are considering RVing after they retire. We had a great time catching up, but unfortunately forgot to take a group picture!

We also had a lovely dinner with a longtime friend of our entire family, Amrit Moore, and her husband Michael Korinek.

One of the days proved quite rainy, but cleared in time for us to witness a beautiful "golden hour" sunset while watching the Pittsburgh Pirates play the LA Dodgers at PNC Park.

It was "Stranger Things" night at the ballpark, and our row won themed gifts - ours was a jigsaw puzzle. We showed up on the Jumbotron, but weren't able to capture a photo of our five seconds of fame.

Another day we visited The Warhol Museum. We'd always associated Andy Warhol with New York City, but in fact he was born and grew up in Pittsburgh as Andrew Warhola, son of Slovenian immigrants. His talent was apparent at an early age, and he attended art classes at the Carnegie Museum.

The Warhol Museum traced his entire career, from his early work as a fashion illustrator, his attraction to and leadership of the Pop Art movement, and his later work in film and video. He often explored duplicate images, making minor changes in each.

One of Andy Warhol's ongoing film projects was something he called Screen Tests, where he made hundreds of 3-4 minute-long films of both famous and 15-minutes-of-fame people sitting stationary and staring into the camera. The museum had a set-up where you could film your own screen test, and Doug tried it out.

VIEWER ADVISORY: This video, slowed down from its original 3 minutes, is more than 4 minutes long, and there's not a lot of movement - just like Warhol's original Screen Tests

The Warhol is right downtown, and we walked across the Andy Warhol Bridge over the Allegheny River...

...and then the Fort Pitt Bridge over the Monongahela River so we could reach the 140-year-old Duquesne Incline.

We rode the incline up some 400 feet to the magnificent view where you can see how the two rivers framing downtown Pittsburgh combine to form the Ohio River.

Cincinnati, OH

The Cincinnati visit was a first for both of us. We only had one full day to explore the city, so set off before lunch to visit the Krohn Conservatory, a small but pretty indoor garden in the city's Eden Park.

We drove to downtown Cincinatti to explore the riverfront area, which was pretty, but strangely empty on a Sunday, even though the Cincinnati Reds were playing in the nearby Great American Ball Park.

We walked underneath the Roebling Suspension Bridge which crosses the Ohio River to Covington, KY. The bridge was built in 1866 by John Roebling, who later went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Both bridges have stone towers holding up the cables.

Every city has its Instagram spot, and Cincinnati is no exception.

Cincinnati was nicknamed Queen of the West (when "the west" meant west of the Appalachians).

Before leaving town, we sampled Cincinnati chili, which is sweeter and more tomato-y than Texas chili.

Indianapolis, IN

Doug had been to Indianapolis for business a few decades ago, and we had passed through the city multiple times in the 'aughts taking our sons Sawyer and Tory back and forth to school in Iowa. But we'd never explored, and this was our chance to do so.

We visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.

The Speedway is the site of the annual Indy 500 race, and the track is HUGE! The museum's collection of Indy cars goes back over 100 years (the track, using a brick surface, was built in 1909), and you could see the evolution of design over the years. We learned that standardized car specifications were only introduced in the early 2000s.

Since its founding, the original brick track has been resurfaced, turns banked higher, and additional road racing tracks and short tracks have been built in the interior, as well as a golf course.

The "Starting Line Experience" featured video highlights of race day.

The Indy 500 trophy has, etched on it, the faces of all the race winners over the years. There is still room to add some at the bottom.

We took a bus tour sponsored by the museum. The actual track was closed for the day - GM had rented it for electric truck testing. NOTE: the Speedway was originally built as a TEST track, and it still serves that purpose today in addition to hosting Indy 500, Nascar, and Formula 1 racing events.

The 33 drivers selected for the Indy 500 walk through Gasoline Alley on the way to their cars for the start.

The Pagoda houses luxury viewing suites in addition to Track Control and the race timers.

Stands surrounding the racetrack can seat more than 250,000 fans who show up on Memorial Day. 125,000 more stand on artificial hillsides distributed around the inside of the track.

We visited the victory platform where the winner and their car are taken at the end of the race, draped with flowers, and given a ceremonial bottle of milk to drink - obviously a tradition that pre-dates Gatorade.

While in Indianapolis we also had the opportunity to take our electric bikes out for a spin (the first time in over a year) on part of the 20-mile long Monon Greenway trail which extends north from downtown Indianapolis. It was one of the prettiest rail-trails we'd been on. In places, we pedaled below archways of trees. The trail also passed through some Indianapolis suburbs, like Carmel, that have built their downtowns around the trail.

Madison, WI

Madison is the state capital of Wisconsin, and the home of the University of Wisconsin's main campus. We'd spent a day here in 2023 while on our Great Lakes Circle trip. The primary goal this trip was to spend a couple of days with Doug's college friend Mimmi Fulmer and husband Ric Merritt, both friends from Doug's Princeton days. Mimmi has spent her career as a Professor in the Music Department at the University of Wisconsin. One of her areas of expertise is Scandinavian music (she's the granddaughter of Finnish and Swedish immigrants. Mimmi also sang at our wedding in 1984. Rick works in IT, but was retiring two days after our visit!

We first caught up with Mimmi and Ric at dinner at their Madison home, and a lovely dinner where we had a chance to catch up on 55 years of history (we first met in 1970 - Mimmi was part of the second class of women undergraduates at Princeton).

On Saturday we went to the Madison Farmer's Market, which is huge and rings around the entire circumference of the State Capitol Building. We took some of our haul back to Mimmi and Ric's place and made a large and tasty brunch.

After dinner at a Thai restaurant, we headed to a concert of Norwegian-American songs (the first Norwegians landed in New York in 1815, so this is the bicentennial year celebrating that immigration) given by a colleague of Mimmi's who lives in Seattle.

Austin, MN

OK, it's not a big city. But Austin is the home of the SPAM Museum, and we knew we had to pay a visit as we headed from Madison toward the Minneapolis area.

Austin also hosts the headquarters of Hormel Foods, makers not only of spam but other classics such as Dinty Moore Beef Stew. They're a diversified food conglomerate with brands such as Skippy peanut butter, and a number of restaurant chains.

The museum (free admission) showcased the history of Hormel and Spam, illustrated the dozens of flavors that Spam comes in (we'd thought there was only one flavor)...

...discussed how popular it is in Asia, and talked about its role as an early MRE (meal-ready-to-eat) during World War II. Hormel was classified as an essential government industry during the war, and 100% of the company's Spam production was sent overseas to soldiers and as part of the lend-lease programs. We also learned that "Black Label" Spam is a delicacy in South Korea with a regular sized can costing $85! Who knew?

Hormel also wanted to dissuade us of any rumors that Spam was "mystery meat" by showcasing all the ingredients.

Minneapolis, MN

We did not spend time in Minneapolis on the way up (we are spending several days there on the Great River Road when we head south), but camped nearby so we could have a lovely dinner with one of Doug's HBS classmates, Tom Slaird, and his wife Jane. Fun to catch up after 47 years.

By the time you read this, our Great River Road trek will have begun. Look for that in our next blog post!