On yesterday’s ride, I wondered why Charlie Myer’s Back Roads of Indiana didn’t recommend the Old Hwy 41 as a place to cross the White River. The new US-41 has wide shoulders for riding, but I prefer back roads. So I took the old road instead. It didn’t have any signs saying the bridge was out or that it was a dead end, so I got my hopes up. Until, that is, I came to this pile of road rubble that looked like it was intended to discourage traffic from going any farther.

This was the view after I dragged my bicycle up and over the heap of debris. So far, so good. The trestle bridge is off in the distance, and the way was clear. The road bed seemed to be in good enough shape for my kind of travel.

Then I came to yet another place where vehicular traffic was discouraged. This time I took the message to heart. I turned back to go across the river on the new US-41 bridge.

googlemap

Google Map is not as discouraged about this crossing as I was.

Mileage for yesterday, including this detour: 34. Tuesday’s mileage: 57. Sunday’s mileage: 34. Previous rides in 2010: 14.5. YTD: 139.5

This photo is just to show that I’m busy spokesriding and that my lack of blogging is for a good cause. Before today’s ride, we ate lunch at Pea-Fections in Vincennes. It was our second time this week. The soup and sandwiches were very good (again) and were served very nicely (again). We managed to beat most of the crowd and get seated right away today, after we got kicked out of the historical library while it closed for lunch.

I have an additional excuse for telling about it, because on Monday I came across a likely connection between the family name Pea and one man who was part of the Black Hawk militia contingent from Vincennes in 1832. It’s a connection by marriage, if I remember correctly. It’s just one of many connections to study further.

Today’s entry in “Up in Alaska: Jill’s subarctic journal” is titled “Homesick.” Jill started to clean out her digital photo collection and got to looking at some old ones from Utah, which made her homesick for something other than Juneau, Alaska. It doesn’t help that her friend, Geoff, is off doing some bicycle competitions in Utah. She says, “Sometimes I feel torn between Alaska and Utah, unsure which one is really my home.”

I think I understand, somewhat. For me it’s not a matter of Utah vs Alaska, although I suppose it could be. But tastes in terrain and scenery can change through life. Her post reminded me of how I now can’t get enough of the kind of scenery shown in the above photo, taken in Knox County, Indiana last October. It really hurt that I had to resort to letting Myra drive me the last ten miles to this site to see the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery before it got dark. I had not expected that kind of open, slightly rolling farm country. Such places have been my favorite for riding in for some years now.

But it wasn’t always that way. I grew up in agricultural country in North Dakota, Nebraska, and Minnesota. When I was a kid we usually went out west to the mountains or the Pacific coast for vacation. Later we went to places like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. We escaped to country that was not at all agricultural. Farm country was something to get away from.

When Myra and I were first married, I’d joke about the flat Iowa cornfields and make fun of southern Minnesota as being nothing but honorary Iowa. She and I would smile at those of an older generation of farmers among her relatives, who viewed the northern Minnesota lake country as wasteland. But now, I can’t get enough of farm country. I still can get tired of extremely flat cropland like the Red River valley of the north, or the Maumee River valley in Ohio or the Kankankee valley in Indiana. But I enjoy even those places like I never could have before.

The change didn’t happen all at once. I found myself telling my kids more times than they cared to hear that I wanted to go to places where the trees had been cut down so I could see the scenery. There are places in the Dakotas like that. The tundra of the Northwest Territories was one of my favorites to visit. I eventually learned to enjoy the Iowa prairies that I used to detest, especially the way one can watch the thunderstorms roll through the big skies. I started to view wooded country as slightly claustrophobic.

But some of the change came about through bicycling. In 1996 I did my second tour ever — a three week ride to all the ballparks in the Midwest League (Class A minor league baseball.) I started off thinking the rides through Indiana and Illinois would be uninteresting except for the challenge of doing all the ballparks. Then when I’d get to the hill country along the Mississippi River and the hills of Wisconsin, that’s when the vacation part would start. Indiana and Illinois were to be endured, Wisconsin was to be enjoyed.

But something happened the day I rode from Fort Wayne to South Bend. I took back roads to avoid the heavily traveled ones, and found myself in farm country that wasn’t exactly like that where I had grown up, but it felt like home anyway. It was like riding through a picture book. It made me feel young again. At the end of the tour, I realized that the parts I enjoyed most were the parts I had expected to be the least interesting, including some of the Illinois prairies that I used to find excruciatingly boring when driving by car. Now that’s the kind of country I seek out. I especially like places where people live out in the country, as opposed to places where people just sleep in houses out in the country. Right now I don’t care for places where people are not to be found.

Will I ever get bored with the farm country and want to seek out the north woods again? Probably not, but who knows. I’m willing to be open to learning to enjoy new parts of the world. I’m also open learning to develop a renewed appreciation for other places I’ve known in the past. And I always like a little variety. I don’t want to limit myself to my favorite kind of country.

A fire hydrant like this should be reason enough to stop for a photo. I got to thinking of it when the question came up of when I was last in a Starbucks.

It’s from my ride north-to-south through Terre Haute last October. I wonder if I should have just ridden through on US-41. I spent a lot of time trying to follow side streets that didn’t take me far before they’d go no further, and then I’d have to find another north-south one. This bike lane goes past Indiana State University. There wasn’t much like this, though. It wasn’t bad or dangerous riding the rest of the way — it just seemed that it took a long time to get through the town.

I didn’t want to circle around the town because a) I wanted to visit the site of Fort Harrison on the north end, and b) I wanted to find something for lunch. I ended up stopping at a Starbucks on the south end of town, where two young women behind the counter gave me good route advice that I should have followed. And I got a cup of coffee and a bite to eat, too.

I’m no fan of Starbucks coffee, though what they sell is predictable and one can do worse. One can do a lot better, too.

Some members of my household have expressed concerned today about my supply of roasted beans. We’re kind of spoiled, though I would like to get even more spoiled.

My favorite sources of roasted beans are Upson’s in Kalamazoo, and Sweet Maria’s in Oakland, CA, and Great Northern in Traverse City. I recently discovered Great Northern. The roaster has an excellent (and somewhat expensive) coffee called Terruño Nayarita Mexican Natural. I just finished another great cup of it. It has a somewhat “minty” flavor, though Great Northern uses a lot more nuance than that to describe it.

It reminds me somewhat of a Panamanian coffee that one of the Phred touring list people who roasts his own coffee, sent me. It, too, has what I think of as minty flavor — maybe just a bit brighter than the Mexican. I used up most of it when it was still very fresh, but there is still a cup or two of it to be brewed. (Thanks, Mark!) It definitely makes me want to be roasting my own.

Being a high-quality retail coffee roaster has to be a tough business. A lot of people don’t care — they’re satisfied with Starbucks or anything that’s dark. And a good roaster will lose the customers who DO care because they will eventually be satisfied with nothing less than roasting their own. I’m afraid I’m soon going to be among them.

One of the difficult things about being on the road is finding good, brwed coffee to match what I make for myself at home. Even out in Seattle’s coffee country I have been surprised at how hard to find a coffee shop that gives you a choice of brewed coffees. And the coffee chains (e.g. Caribou Coffee) that used to give one a couple of choices now seem to have only one, take it or leave it.

But usually I don’t have time to mess with any elaborate coffee-making while doing my history rides. Even as it was, I ran out of daylight on the day of the photos in this article, and ended up hitching a ride to my destination at Maria Creek.

Maria Creek (and the Maria Creek cemetery) is off to the right, behind the tree line. We had a little walking to do to get there.

This cornfield is from the first day of my first multi-day bicycle outing of 2007. Some people say all cornfields are alike. At this time of year, I think they all have unique personalities, mostly because you can still see the terrain underneath. Later, when they’re middle-aged, they aren’t so interesting.

This one is on Indian Prairie, south of White Pigeon in St. Joseph County, Michigan. Incidentally, at this time of year it’s easy to tell the Amish cornfields from the others by looking down the rows. The rows aren’t as straight on Amish fields. Yes, the Amish people tend to be neat, tidy, and regular. But there is no way horses can hold the planter to an absolutely straight path the way farm tractors can, even when the tractors are not laser-guided. On slight sidehills, the Amish planting rig is going to slip sideways a bit. At this time of year you can see it. But unfortunately, I don’t have any photos to prove it.

This is the grave of Charles Polke at the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery in Knox County, Indiana. (He was a Revolutionary War veteran and was the father of William and Christiana. There is a creek in Cass County, Michigan that is named for Christiana. Christiana’s husband, Isaac McCoy, was pastor here for 8 years.) The grave is all that’s left of a cemetery that was mostly destroyed by corn-planting over the past decade.

This was at the end of the last day of what was probably my last multi-day bicycle outing of the year.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2007/10/23/beginning-and-end/feed/ 0 http://www.spokesrider.com/2007/10/12/287/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2007/10/12/287/#comments Sat, 13 Oct 2007 04:25:37 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2007/10/12/287/

This is a view along the last leg of the path from the paved road to the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery. (The road is one between Oaktown and Freelandville, Indiana.) The gravesite of Charles Polke is near the trees, left of center in the photo, where it would be hard to see at any distance if not for four steel fence posts set in the ground at the four corners. They are not visible in the photo, but can be seen as one gets closer.

Isaac McCoy was pastor here for eight years before going away to do missions to the Indians on Raccoon Creek in present-day Parke County, at the Carey Mission near Niles, Michigan, and in Kansas. He was in fact a person who while in Michigan was agitating the government to remove Indians to Kansas, which views happened to be agreeable to that same government, which happened to be funding his mission school. The Potawatomi people of southwest Michigan didn’t particularly like that aspect of McCoy’s activities when they found out about it. It cooled their relationship somewhat.

McCoy’s missionary ideas were controversial while he was pastor here at Maria Creek. There were anti-missionary Baptists who were opposed to mission boards and such activities as McCoy was starting to get into among the Indians. The present-day Primitive Baptist Church is descended from the anti-missionary baptists and gives its side of the story here.

The controversy is fairly complex, and I will not try to summarize it. Instead I’ll mention one aspect that it seems they were opposed to. Mission Boards tended to sponsor celebrity preachers who would make brief stops at congregations, trying to raise enthusiasm and money for their work. McCoy was one with these tendencies; another was John Mason Peck whose activities were mostly on the other side of the Wabash, in Illinois. In secular terms, we can say this was contrary to the democratic and egalitarian spirit of self-government that was present in the young United States.

There is a lot more to it than that, but I do not have the knowledge or resources to attempt a summary at this time. When I first learned about it, it seemed one of those internal squabbles within a religious group that would not be of interest to those on the outside. But I would now like to learn more, because it seems to be not so “internal” after all.

There is not much visible sign of it at this site, but it makes it a special place worthy of some care.

This is a view on the way back from the walk to the Maria (aka Mariah) Creek Baptist cemetery yesterday. I had expected country that was more full of woods and ravines. Maybe if I had known it would be like this, I would have pushed harder to be able to ride here.  That’s the kind of country I like.

Today wasn’t so good. I had a small ride planned, but also wanted to take some photos in Rockville. We first went to get a breakfast, and that’s where I discovered I didn’t have my billfold. After searching my stuff, I went back to our motel room, looked some more, then we searched the car some more. The last time I had remembered using it was at the MacDonalds in Sullivan, a few miles short of my end point yesterday.

My seat had started to get raw several miles before that point in my ride yesterday, so I had opened a new bottle of baby powder to powder my butt. It must not be the unscented kind. I could tell when I went into the MacDonalds and was standing behind some off-duty police officers, that I still smelled like baby powder. Baby powder isn’t so bad, but it also reminds me of some of the other smells that come with babies. I think one of the officers was also looking around to see where the smell came from, too, but I acted nonchalant. Then I went outside to eat so I wouldn’t have to smell myself. Trying to study my maps in the wind, maybe I had put my billfold in the paper bag and then had thrown it away.

So this morning, after having searched and re-searched everything, we drove the 50-plus miles to Sullivan. Nobody had turned in a billfold there, and the trash had already been hauled away so there was no chance to do any dumpster-diving.

That was discouraging, so we headed home — 330 miles worth. The weather was kind of dreary and cool today, anyway. Myra had to do all the driving, given that I didn’t have a license on me. On the way I made phone calls and canceled credit cards and ATM cards, thinking also how it had been way too much driving for only a little over a hundred miles of bike riding.

When we got home we found a message on our answering machine. The billfold had been found in our room, messed up in the bed covers. Well, I had looked everywhere else in the room, including under the seat cushions.

At least I don’t need to get a replacement drivers’ license.

I didn’t even get photos of Rockville.   But this web page has a photo of our room — the blue one –  and of the bed where the billfold was found.

It looks like Rockville will have good weather for its 10-day covered bridge festival.  People said they expected somewhere between 1 and 2 million visitors!   That’s for the entire county for 10 days, but that’s a lot of people for such small towns in such a rural area.    Food and craft booths were being set up in every little town, and in places in between.    I’m glad we beat the rush.   The weather was nice early in the week, which appeared to have brought other people who decided to open the festival early.  But everything was fine while we were there.

I’d like to go there again sometime, but I’m not so sure I’d care to do it in quite this fashion again.

This is what’s left of the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery in Knox County, Indiana. The gravesite of Charles Polke is now marked by four steel fence posts, and is not currently threatened by agricultural implements.

Our car, with my bicycle on it, was parked at the trees in the left center background. The creek is behind me.

I rode 56 miles, but didn’t make it all the way by bicycle. At the end I was riding on US-41, trying to make up for lost time but hoping Myra would pass me there so I could hitch a ride and get to the gravesite before dark. It worked.

The countryside here in Knox County was not what I had expected, but it’s the kind of place where I like to ride. So it was doubly disappointing not to have made it on two wheels. On the other hand, this way Myra and I had a nice walk together to the gravesite. It was a walk of maybe 2/3 of a mile along old fence rows.

The ride started from Rosedale, one of the places I had ridden to Monday, with the idea that it would be a ride of about 60 miles. But that still wasn’t enough. It didn’t help that I took a side trip to Fort Harrison on the north end of Terre Haute, and hung around there awhile.

It would also have helped if I had followed the advice of the two nice young women at the Starbucks on the south end of Terre Haute. We bicycle tourers often complain about how non-riders don’t give good advice about roads. In this case, I could have saved myself some miles if I had taken the road they suggested. In fact, I should have listened to their answers about the areas where I said I didn’t want to ride. On the plus side, I had a nice ride through Vigo County, until I got to the county line.

This is the gravesite of Nawehquageezhik (Noonday) and his wife, Somonoque, at the east end of Cressey Road in Barry County, Michigan. The gravestone is in the mowed area to the right of the bicycle.

This story of this gravestone is connected with another gravestone near Vincennes, Indiana, that I’m hoping to ride to this year yet. There are a few degrees of separation, though.

Noonday’s grave is here because the Slater mission was located here in the late 1830s. Leonard Slater’s mission was a part of Isaac McCoy’s Baptist missions in southwest Michigan. Slater operated somewhat independently of McCoy, not that the latter man liked it that way. McCoy’s wife Christiana (after whom Christiana Creek was named) was a sister of William Polke, who among things, was one of the people who had a large role in operating the 1838 eviction of the Potawatomi from Indiana.

This is William Polke’s house on the grounds of the Fulton County Historical Museum north of Rochester, Indiana. Its original location was not far from here, where it was at the time of the Potawatomi eviction from Indiana.

The gravestone I want to visit is that of William Polke’s father, Charles, at the site of the Maria Creek Baptist church northeast of Vincennes, Indiana. That church is also where Isaac McCoy got his start in the ministry. A lot of history seems to have a connection to that Maria Creek church.

The church was disbanded in the 1940s. I had learned from this web page that as of 2004 the cemetery was almost gone, too. Most of it had been destroyed in recent years by agricultural field work. So Thursday I got on the phone to inquire whether any of the cemetery still existed, and whether it would be possible to walk to it. It’s a half mile away from the nearest road.

I ended up talking to an animated gentleman with a southern Indiana accent that I seldom get to hear in Michigan, and learned that the Polke grave still exists. And the place is pronounced Morriah, not Maria. But it had been quite a struggle dealing with the farmer, to keep him from destroying the cemetery any more than he had already done. The local people who cared about it had tried appealing to just about everyone they could think of for help in preserving it, but didn’t get much. I also learned that the farmer had died a year ago, “and is now paying for what he did.”

That’s where the theology of the grave comes in. It would be interesting to know whether it’s like that which was preached at the Maria Creek church in the 1810s.

The gentleman I talked to gave me more information about local people to talk to and local publications that tell about the church, the cemetery, and people who had worshipped there and been buried there.

Before talking to him I had had the idea that I would do a one-day ride to Maria Creek from Rockville, where we’ll be staying on our next outing. The days are short now but if I get an early start I should be able to get there in time for photos. But now I think I need to plan on spending at least a whole day in Vincennes. Maybe I’ll do the bike ride this time, and we can use Vincennes as our base camp for the next outing. We’ll see.