Pictures to come

So much has happened since we left Rochester, New York, and we have gotten seriously behind on our postings. We will try to catch up and caption our photographs with enough detail to give a hint of what we’ve been up to. Sorry for the delay!

We stayed one night in Rochester and then drove to Niagara Falls but stopped to see Michelle’s aunt and uncle who had driven to meet us in Geneseo, on one of the Finger Lakes. Upstate New York really knocks me out, lakes everywhere and plenty of rolling hills that in the fall have turned a dozen colors. Driving through here invoked many memories.

Niagara Falls, on the Canadian Side, has become a miniature Las Vegas, glowing neon and offering tourist thrills by the inch. I think that by projecting a slightly seedy image, by hyping itself and providing so many ways to spend money, the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, sets a tourist up to be almost obliterated by the actual falls. Your head clears at last, perhaps not until you are drenched in spray, and you seem to plunge hundreds of feet into something more natural and exhilarating than any arcade, haunted mansion, or tattoo parlor.

For two days we ate well and took pictures at the Falls, once having lunch just overlooking the point where the water turns greener and spills over the edge. We decided not to see Toronto but to rest instead, and then headed for Michigan through Hamilton and London, Ontario.

Neither of us could see ourselves living in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, or Holland, but we visited a cool museum and gained a small sense of industrial America. Car factories, furniture producing behemoths, steel mills, and the occasional petrochemical plant contrasted an otherwise green and farm dotted landscape. We also experienced our first snow fall outside of Lansing, as well as small ice pellets that bounced off the windshield and shot down off and on until almost the exact point where we drove across the Indiana state line, sloughing gray clouds for blue sky.

This trip has turned into a second honeymoon! We are learning how to communicate the need to slow down at times and enjoy being together in one place. We skipped Chicago city sights and luxuriated in the studio suite Michelle found for us in the Chicago Area town of Lombard. Just took the day off. Nothing to see, no where to consider. I think the size of Chicago and the resemblance of the suburbs to those around Washington D.C made our choice easy.

On our first day in the area, however, we checked out Michelle’s alma mater, Wheaton College, just south of Lombard. She studied acting there and when we visited the department we found two teachers and one student (who has since become technical director of the theater) who instantly recognized her. I think it was a powerful experience for her, to remember that time in her life and to consider her work and training as an actor. We all talked for a long time and then the teachers and technical director had to return to preparations for their next production, Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Now we are caught up! We have driven the two hours from Chicago to Bloomington, Illinois, and are visiting Michelle’s friend Darcie and her husband Geoff. We will get a tour of the city today and Michelle will visit Darcie at the elementary school where she teaches. I think and hope that Geoff and I will watch a horror movie as he has the bug pretty badly, and, well, horror makes me happy. We have all day here, enjoying friends, and tomorrow we leave for Saint Louis.