On the road again

Odd, some of the things

one sees from the window of the olive green Rogue.

We are traveling through eastern Ohio. There, in stately isolation in a break between a vast flat landscape of cornfields, sits a “Gentlemen’s Club”. It is far from any town. Are those gentlemen not so gentlemanly? Have they

been exiled in their pursuits? One can only wonder as more world reels past the window.

We’re tucked in behind a truck, both of us keeping a steady cruise control pace on this pleasant country road called East 250.

It is easy, relaxed driving in a soothing agricultural landscape.

Corn, glorious corn. Low carpets of soy crops. More corn, corn, corn as far as the eye can see.

We are used to it but not sick of it. There is something deeply satisfying about being in the fecundity of the corn bowl. It has not always been good for everyone. We see many failed businesses and tumble-down barns along the way.

We see quaint businesses like Grandpa’s Cheese Barn.

As the landscape begins to undulate, we see tidy little farms with fenced vegetable gardens. Invariably, there are a lot of parked cars on properties. Boats, too.

A town called Savannah, dense with beflagged two-storey clapboard houses, has a handsome Presbyterian church and a “Cattleman’s Restaurant”.

Fields, barns, silos..,

A sign to Ashland, population 20,362, ethanol factories and an amazing claim to fame: The World’s HQ of Nice People. Perversely, we skip the townsfolk and drop in on Walmart.

A great, big, cavernous box of a place it is!

Is that an Amish woman shopping in

this devil’s world of cheap foreign-made products?

I wonder what she is seeking.

Not what we are after, I’m sure.

We have come in for glue and a high-beam defence torch, as recommended by the chap we met in Milwaukee. I adore torches and can't help collecting them. This one has me fiercely intrigued. Want.

We head for the gun department.

It is deserted, apart from lots of guns, of course.

They are behind glass. All sorts of rifles and

shotguns. There are other weapons around us on the shelves. Lots of crossbows and hunting knives and other sorts of guns. There all sorts of holsters.

There are ladies’ guns and heavy-duty guns.

What there is not, is a gun shop assistant. Bruce rings the counter bell over and over and over.

We forage around looking for defence lights and find all sorts of torches, most of which I adore, since I never saw a torch I didn’t want. But not what we seek.

We are on the verge of leaving when the funniest looking woman emerges from a backroom door.

She is rotund and squat, heavily bespectacled

with terrible skin and thin, furry hair tied in a topknot. She is not the smartest but she could not be more willing to be helpful. She suggests the motoring department has gadgets which can break car windows. Interesting. I am after a torch, though.

Back to the passing corn fields. Roadsigns warn us to beware of horse and carriages.

Yes, it’s Amish country.

Rowsburg pops up, settled in 1835. It is serene and sedate with historic old red brick buildings.

Corn, corn. Little farms.

New Pittsburgh? Unlike its old namesake, it is a

tiny town featuring a huge barn and silo - and cornfields.

We turn off 250 onto 30 and find ourselves rolling into a valley.

Wildflowers abound on the verges by the cornfields. A sign encourages us to stop for peaches.

Yes, please.

We buy from girls in a barn beside cornfields. The peaches are not

grown around here, they say. They grow corn hereabouts. The fruit is from South Carolina.

Suddenly the road is lined by trees. A great wall of trees. It is like the eastern-state roads. We are on eastern states time. I guess I’m going to have to get used to this landscape. Bloody trees which steal the light and the horizons. With the horizon removed, one becomes more aware of the clouds - and they are thickening.

Another historic town. East Canton. 1700s. It’s a plain little town.

Mapleton comes along. It’s a bit scrappy and workmanlike. Old beer-bellied blokes in the street. I wonder if they do some of the mowing around here. There are large expanses of immaculate mowing. This is one of the great hallmarks of the USA - mown lawns and parks and fields. However scruffy the property, the mowing is always fastidious. They mow carefully around old car bodies and piles of junk.

Even trailerparks. And there goes one.

Ah, open country again. I’ve missed it. Corn and soy fields stream past the window.

A town called Minerva with a lovely old Lutheran church and a main street dense in old two-storey wooden houses.

What the...? A giant blue cow? We must be in dairy country. Can’t see cows. There are some abandoned farms and Kensington, a run-down darling little town. It has an icecream parlour. Icecream flavour of the day: Cow Tippin’. Some things I just don’t understand.

Hanoverton, population 408. Another down-at-heel town with a lot of American flags. Serious flags. Big flags. Among them a banner saying “By the grace of God, save our nation.”

Bet there’s a lot of guns in those old houses.

And so the roads roll on, winding a bit now as the landscape becomes a mixture of woodlands and fields.

There are ponds and Christmas tree farms.

SKUNK! The unmistakable smell of skunk leaks into the car. There’s no describing it. Pungent. Poor little creature. Did it just spray in self-defence or has it been hurt or killed somewhere.

Motorcyclists thrum past. They are not wearing helmets.

Lisbon, population 2,821, bears signs saying “Live. Love. Grow”. What a lovely town. Cute and touristy. It has a local theatre company. Steel Trolley Diner with the word “Oldies” in the window. I just love it. I want to stop.

But we are on the clock. We swing right to route 30 and, suddenly, there’s a mountain in my face. We’re on a four-laned highway winding into the hills.

It’s steep valleys. There’s a truss bridge over a huge river and East Liverpool, a big, beautiful town.

And look, look! A sign says : "Welcome to West Virginia”.

Yes! A new state.

It is gorgeous. I love it.

And, then, suddenly, it is Welcome to Pennsylvania.

That was just the tip of West Virginia, says Bruce.

Winding roads, scruffy fields. This seems more a suburban world than agricultural.

Look at that. “GOT FAR WOOD”. It is a sign with an accent.

The landscape is drier here. There are crops but they look stunted. There are greenhouses. It looks a bit more like Australia.

It’s 89 deg out there.

Shit. A detour. A sign reveals that a bridge is out.

We pass Clinton, a big development. Gee, there are a lot of towns called Clinton.

And there are a lot of roadworks on the American interstate highways.

The country roads are lovely. The big ones are a mess of red cones, narrowed lanes and work machinery. This detour is a biggie. And the signs are hard to follow. So near and yet so far. Pittsburgh was right there and now we are going away from it.

Stop, start, look for signs, take an exit, swing onto another main road…

It is a 45-minute diversion and then we are finally entering Pittsburgh.

Oh, it is fantastic.

Pittsburgh, I think I love you already.

Beer, Brats, Bowling and Bikes - Milwaukee

Looking for lunch in small town America

can be challenging. I often turn to Yelp as we hit a main street.

Today turns up a truly OMG moment when the cafe we are considering turns out to have scored the worst reviews I’ve ever seen. One reviewer had spotted a cockroach in the loo and another reported seeing the chef spit in someone’s drink. We keep driving.

Sundays are tricky in the small towns. Little is open. So it is that we pass hungrily through several flyspeck towns before, in some sort of ravenous desperation, we stop in

quaint little Kewaskum Village, Wisconsin, where the motorbikes are whooshing noisily through the streets.

We’ve spotted a funny little Coffee Corner cafe and we are going in, no matter what.

And we behold two lovely, hearty country girls bustling behind a high counter of delicious-looking patisserie and wraps and in front of a ceiling-high blackboard listing almost every gourmet coffee and coffee style that there is. Several student types sit at tables or counters with laptops. Newspapers lie invitingly on

tables.

We just can’t believe our luck.

Since we are in the cheese state of Wisconsin, I order their gourmet multi-cheese melt. B opts for a Caesar salad. We both order macchiatos. The coffees are superb, the salad’s ok but my Wisconsin cheesy treat

is just died-and-gone-to-heaven gorgeous.

Our destination today is Milwaukee. It’s a tough old city and I’m here to tell you it has terrible roads.

Bruce says its big thing is the Three Bs - Beer, Brats and Bowling.

We bucket our way into the city over ribbed roads, past vacant lots and derelict buildings.

The city proper looks more prosperous and some of the

buildings are truly handsome old things.

Our hotel is the Aloft, right on the Milwaukee river. Fabulous hotel and I am thrilled with the river and city view. My first impression as we unload the car is that it is a seagull city. The mournful songs of herring gulls. They not only wheel through the air but they occupy the river like flocks of ducks, feeding enthusiastically on something that seems to ride on the current.

Our exploratory walk takes us over the river and into, of all things, Irish Town. It is one Irish pub after another.

We retrace our steps and head towards the business district.

Here is the fine old newspaper in the most massive building with the most ferocious security I have ever seen. A big signs warns against bringing weapons into the premises.

Getting into the premises at all looks like the issue to

me. I wonder where the door is.

There’s a big beer emphasis in this part of town. Faux German facades on buildings, bars…and lots of restaurants.

As we check the menu of a modern-looking Italian restaurant, a bloke snappily dressed in shorts and runners and sitting alone at an outside table calls out that we’d really like this place. The food is fabulous.

Well, the last time a local gave us that sort of recommendation, it was brilliant. We tell the bloke so and a conversation ensues. He invites us to sit down and have a drink with him. He’s buying. And, by the way, he has never eaten at this restaurant. He never eats after breakfast.

Only drinks. And smokes Mores.

What an interesting exchange. Of course, we buy the next round and we learn lots about him, his family and, importantly Milwaukee. He asks if he reminds us of anyone. Er, yes. A few years older, he could be Alan Alda. He’s a rabid right-winger and owns lots of guns, he says. He hates the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel because it is too liberal.

An aggressive African-American beggar approaches us, leaning over the table and wanting to shake hands with us all. Our new friend takes his hand and tells him off very firmly,

then turns his back, rifles though his billfold and gives the man money. At that moment, two men erupt from the restaurant and tell the beggar to go away. To my astonishment, he challenges them. Voices are raised. Chests puff out. I am rattled. No, terrified. The beggar lopes away, shouting abuse behind him. I say I am glad no one had guns. One of the men says, of course he has a gun. He’s a policeman.

Our new friend says he does not have a gun with him. He's taken to carrying a simpler defence weapon. He produces a high intensity flashlight and briefly blinds me with it. I am not pleased.

But I am impressed. I want one.

A middle-aged bloke turns up carrying a basket of tennis balls. My tennis coach, says our friend who is three sheets to the wind by now. We’re going to play.

It is hard to imagine.The coach gets a drink and then disappears to have a cigarette unseen.

I wonder what sort of tennis this will be.

We take our leave and toddle off down the road looking for dinner.

We find a nice umbrellaed table on the street at Buck Bradley’s Saloon and Eatery. It is in one of the very old and lovely buildings on this Old World Third Street.

Nothing to drink, thanks. We order hearty meals. The beggar turns up again. What the? Even I swear at him this time.

Buck’s turns out to be not only a decent restaurant but also an historic one. It is in one of the earliest buildings in the street

and it brags the longest linear bar east of the Mississippi River.

It is absurdly long.

When they’re busy, they need five barmen to cover it.

It is not busy tonight.

We meander off for a pleasant riverside stroll to look at the history of the area and commune with the huge herring gulls before we repair to our lovely hotel room and the traveller’s regular duty, getting a load of washing through the guest laundry.

This is our first Aloft hotel. It will not be our last. It

is a relatively new chain and it has been designed with aesthetics and originality as well as superior logistics and ergonomics. The rooms are compact but feature a long wall couch which enables very neat organisational possibilities for guests. The desks are at the window. Downstairs there are 24-hour refreshments in an area which materialises into a hot breakfast cafe in the

mornings. The pool is terrific. The lounge areas are beaut. The WiFi is snappy. We sleep like logs. Yep. Aloft is on our travel radar now.

There is something we HAVE to do before leaving Milwaukee; visit the Harley Davidson Museum.

This makes the fourth B in Milwaukee's B bonnet.

Bikes! The Harley museum is a big deal. People come from all over the world. We’re not aficionados but we admire Harley Davidson as a successful employee-owned company.

The museum is immense.

I hear all sorts of accents among the visitors, fellow Aussies among them.

Despite the noisiness of motorcycles, the Harley museum is hushed.

There's a sense of reverence. Bikers speak softly. They wander about slowly, in awe. They point and photograph and nudge each other.

There is a great deal to admire. It is a museum equivalent of shiny Harley chrome.

The hundreds of bikes on show go right back to the crudest first concepts

...things with leather straps instead of bike chains.

They include all sorts of commercial manifestations of motorbike, sidecar bikes, war bikes, racing bikes, show bikes…

There is a massive wall devoted to bikers, each little square image contained a picture and video profile of bikers male and female.

There is a vast wall of petrol tanks.

There are biker belts, badges of all the Harley clubs of the world, helmets (not that they wear them hereabouts), engines, stabilisers…

While most of the museum, which is on several vast storeys, is do-not-touch, it culminates with a big section of bikes on which one is invited to sit and pose and fantasise.

Yes, of course I do. I pick a snappy gold number and ham it up.

Between you and me, I can't imagine anything more hair-disturbingly nerve-wracking than travelling on one of these, let alone than here in one of America's no-helmet law states.

We return to the dear old olive green Rogue,

packed to the gunwales with luggage, and purr off to see if the vast coils and loops of spaghetti highway junctions whence one must leave Milwaukee will defeat Bruce's astute navigational skills.

Only momentarily - and we are off on the road to Chicago.

What? Cowboys are arty boys?

The first sign I see in Sheridan is neon.

“Welcome Stranger”, it says.

My heart sings.

I love this place already.

Its backdrop beneath the sunny blue sky is a range of vast snow-topped mountains. Picturebook.

Sheridan, is famously a Wyoming cowboy town. It is proper, official, historic wild west. Cowboys and Indians. It’s where the Indians fought the whites and won initially.

It is the wild west town where all the cowboys wear 10 gallon hats and are really friendly.

On into town I spot the Jewish Bible Centre. Hmm. I’d never thought of cowboys as being Jewish.

Nor had I thought of them as arty farties.

But Sheridan is a cowboy town with more stunning urban sculpture than I have ever seen. This is the artiest town ever.

There are elaborate bronze sculptures on every street corner.

Cowboys and wolves, Indian Braves and pioneer women. It is an open air art gallery where all the works can be touched.

It seems to be a local government project, not only beautifying an already good looking town but giving employment to bronze sculptors, of which the region must have quite a few.

As well as art, the streets are festooned with hanging

flower baskets. Pretty.

There is a lovely old theatre - and a Theatre Festival announced. Soon. Tomorrow’s plays today, it says.

This really is not what I had expected of this part of the world.

How upmarket are these cowboys?

We stroll the main street in the sunshine, popping in

to characterful local art, craft and souvenir shops. I immediately want a sign saying “Welcome Stranger” but funnily enough, there are none and no one has thought of making any. Three shopkeepers I ask think it is a wonderful idea and they’ll get on to it. Perhaps I would like to have one shipped to my home?

We choose the Cowboy Cafe for lunch. It is the proper cowboy thing. We are given a table on the street-side patio and can watch the world go by - lots of fellows in 10 gallon hats. Yes, they truly do wear them.

I order a chicken breast with jalapeño and hot pepper cheese. It is fiery and gorgeous. I ask for the recipe. It is chicken breast with jalapeño and hot pepper cheese.

Contented by good cowboy food and charmed by good cowboy art, we hit the road again. The radio station seems to be called Cowboy Radio.

We settle in to listen as we hum along Highway 90 through the cowboy country.

Wonderful vast valleys with those glorious blue mountains looming large. We are in a spot oft commemorated as part of the exploratory trails of Lewis & Clark.

We pause at a famous scenic point to prove that we have been here. I strike a corny pose.

The scenery is changing all the time. Now it moves into ranges. Broad, undulating, green, dotted by black cattle and the occasional pastures of horses.

There are wooden corrals out there on the landscape, too.

A dead porcupine on the side of the road.

The radio station identifies itself now as Radio Coyote.

A great lake shimmers into view between the slopes of hills.

We are coming into Buffalo, Wyoming where we check in at the Holiday Inn Express. It has a massive portico under which a couple of black girls are lolling and laughing. I soon learn they are Jamaican and here for three months working at the hotel.

I later learn that they are unhappy and planning to return to Jamaica.

It is an interesting issue.

Conspicuous by their absence through this inland western area of the USA are African Americans. This is white man’s land. The girls must feel very isolated.

The reception chap does not impress me. He meets my request for a room with a view in the negative, even though I cited it on reservation. Our sort of room does not get a view, he says. Can we upgrade to one which does, please? No. There are only two and they are already booked. Oh.

The room is perfectly adequate but the view is dire. It is a view of the hotel portico, the awning under which the cars drive for incoming guests to register and unload.

It is a dismal and depressing view. Not even sky.

It makes me very sad.

We unpack and go check out the pool, Closed

until 4.30. I am not having much luck in this hotel. However, I’ve done my homework on Buffalo and I am armed with the knowledge that this little cowboy town brags the biggest free outdoor public swimming pool in the world. Off we go to catch some sun before the weather closes in.

It is a truly immense pool in a lovely parkland setting.

And it is free.

We walk in.

There is a very deep section at the far distant end where youths are taking it in turns to practice diving under the eagle eye of a lifeguard.

Then there is an Olympic sized section of the pool roped off in racing lanes.

Then there is a vast open area of 4ft water.

Then behind a floating rope, there is an extensive shallow kids’s section.

Beside that beside the pool is a high sprinkler area where kids are running and leaping between dancing spouts of water high and low.

People are lolling on rugs on the grass or on camp chairs. Mainly children are swimming.

We find a bench poolside to enjoy the sun.

As I approach a pool ladder, a little boy calls out to me that the water is really cold.

“You should go under the sprinklers before you come in and it is not so bad,” he warns.

I touch the water.

He’s right. Cold.

I walk down and enter gradually from the shallows. I have a bit of a swim and join B on the bench for some much needed sunshine.

When the threatening clouds close in we drive back to the hotel with no view.

Waiting to get some change for the washing machine, I watch the receptionist who told me that he had no rooms with views book in a number of walk-in guests and allocate them rooms with two queen beds and windows looking out at the outside world. The rooms he would not give us. I am beyond commenting on this. I am still feeling scorched by his rejections. Secretly I am wondering if he hates Australians.

I put on a wash and take myself off for a proper

swim in the hotel’s indoor pool. I have it all to myself, so I can do exercises without feeling self-conscious.

Buffalo is not as enchanting as Sheridan but it brags a famous historic hotel called the Occidental.

I chose not to stay there because it looked so over-the-top historic dinky quaint and the online reviews discouraged me. I'd opted for mod cons. This travel blogging business requires good connectivity. And thus did I end up in that damned room with no view.

But the Occidental is on my check-it-out list. Hemingway stayed here. Teddy Roosevelt. Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Calamity Jane…

they all used this place in its early days. It has changed a lot since then, grown, been destroyed, rebuilt, decayed, now revived.

The place has been restored like a lavish old movie set. It is great fun. Over the top of course. We peruse the hallway of history photos and allow ourselves to wallow in its lush nostalgia. Next door, through an arch, is the saloon bar which is pretty much exactly as a wild west saloon bar should be, all wood

>and bottles, ten gallon hats and wailing country and western live music.

Loud.

We take the gentler, quieter path, of course. We enter the restaurant, The Virginian, where a voluptuous, tattooed and extremely large young waitress leads us to a charming table enclosed in lace drapes and set up two steps in what, we later learn, used to be a shop window. There are brass hand rails around us. It is totally chintzy, extremely romantic and altogether fun. I try a few window dummy poses but they don’t go down. Oh well.

We order. I ordered the Occidental special spicy chicken marsala. I am always after spices. Of

course, salad comes first, American style. Lovely and fresh. It’s a bit of a wait and then, to my surprise, the chicken marsala consists of pan-glazed cubed chicken with slivers of grilled mushroom in a lightly fragrant oily sauce with spaghetti. It is utterly out of this world. It is anarchical fusion cuisine - and perhaps the best pasta dish I have ever encountered.

Bruce has gorgonzola and pear ravioli which is extremely rich, unusual, and delicious. He thinks the balsamic glaze is a bit much but swoons at the sweet cheesy sensation.

Cowboy food?

No, the Virginian is an Occidental add-on, not part of the original hotel. It was the shop next

door and the bank beyond that but it has all been linked up, given a similar lavishly retro decor with lots of lace and old paraffin lamps and heavily sentimental art. There are several rooms and even another romantic intimate space for private dinners - the old bank vault with its heavy door and vaulted ceiling.

After dinner we walk Buffalo’s main street, which is not a big walk. The town’s setting, with those snow-spotted mountains in the distance, is gorgeous. We imagine how simple and rough it must have been in its gun-slinging heyday. There are not a lot of shops but the local sports and souvenir store is huge and the first thing one sees is a wall racked solid with guns for sale. Lovely feather fishing flies also are prominent.

Oh, and did I mention ten gallon hats?

Along the way in the street also is war memorial and some interesting local history museums which we will miss - since we have to hit the trail in the morning.

And so to bed in our room with no view.