I had just two main activities today but they were good ones. First was Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The name comes from a Native peoples legend about a mother bear and two cubs swimming across Lake Michigan looking for food. The mother bear made it to shore but the two cubs drowned. They surfaced as North and South Manitou Islands just offshore and the mother bear became a giant sand dune, looking after her children.

The geological explanation is sand blown across Lake Michigan by strong winds onto high land formed by retreating glaciers. Either way the views of sand dunes, forests and water are spectacular. I went for a hike to a bluff high above Lake Michigan. Then a 7 mile scenic road with many overlooks and short strolls, to get a closer look at the sand dunes and forests.

Next I headed south to Grand Rapids, the hometown of President Gerald Ford and the location of his burial and Presidential museum (I will see his library tomorrow in Ann Arbor). The museum is quite comprehensive, covering his childhood when he was adopted by and named after his mother’s second husband, Gerald Ford. Then his lifetime of public service – in a WWII naval ship that barely survived a tsunami in the Pacific, 24 years in the House of Representatives rising to House Minority leader, vice president and president.

A few quick stops at the end of the day – Michigan State University in East Lansing, the state capitol at Lansing and my one and only haircut on the trip.

The song of the day is “Detroit Rock City” by Kiss. I will be hearing Motown music tomorrow.

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I was taking a ferry to Mackinac Island this morning anyway. But then I got an assignment that added immeasurably to my enjoyment.

Our good friend Karen Stahl loves the 1980 romantic comedy “Somewhere in Time”, starring Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour. It involves time travel back to 1912 (spoiler alert), and the movie is set and was filmed on Mackinac Island, which can easily look a century old. Karen wanted me to take a picture of the Grand Hotel, a key location in the film. When I got the island brochure I found out there are two other photo ops from the movie.

So as I was on my scavenger hunt, I saw a lot of areas of the town I may have otherwise missed. I did visit Fort Mackinaw which overlooks the main shopping street, as well as a museum of local art located in an old school for native Americans.

Mackinac Island seems to be the premier upscale summer vacation spot in the Midwest. It reminds me of Block Island or a smaller version of Nantucket, with one main town and a lot of open area. There’s one big difference – no cars have been allowed on the island for over 100 years. Everyone is riding a bike and there are dozens of horse-drawn carriages for tourists. So thank you Karen, for helping me make Mackinac Island one of the highlights of my trip.

I spent the rest of the day in Mackinaw City itself. I visited an old lighthouse, which had a duplex house below for the families of the two lightkeepers who alternated keeping the lens lit. Then I visited Fort Michilimacinach, which belonged to the French and British before it was replaced by the fort on the Island. Finally, I went to Mill Creek to see the remains of the first water mill (and support buildings) in the area.

Today’s song is another one by Bob Seger, Michigan’s favorite singer in the non-Motown division. It’s “Night Moves”, as I am moving every night from town to town.

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I reached four different milestones today.

First, my journey is three quarters over – 9 weeks completed and 3 weeks to go. I am looking forward to my remaining days on the road – and also to resuming my regular activities starting June 4th.

Second, as I write this opfrom Mackinaw City, Michigan, I have now visited all 50 United States in my life, which was one of my major goals of this trip.

Third, I got an oil change, tire rotation and balancing today and the Subaru service department in Green Bay thinks I will make it my last 5,000 miles or so.

And finally I am on Eastern Daylight Savings time for the rest of the trip. For the first time since March 31st in Louisville, my watch (which I did not reset) is correct.

I spent the day in Green Bay, by far the smallest U.S. city to host a major sports team. I visited the American Railroad Museum, which has plenty of trains to walk through, one to ride on but also exhibits on the history of Pullman porters and why railroad passenger travel largely died with the growth of cars and airplanes.

Lambeau Field has been the scene of some of the greatest – and coldest – pro football games ever. It was 60 degrees and sunny as I took a tour with two guides who are also both long-time season ticket holders and partial owners of the only publicly-held pro sports team.

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Then a pleasant stroll through the Green Bay Botanical Gardens, which had more flowers in bloom – even some roses – than I would have expected in early May this far north.

I left Green Bay after my Impreza was serviced and had an over four hour drive through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, seemingly inches from the water of the vast Lake Michigan. You’ll see a sunset picture taken at 9:00, as I am 950 miles west of Boston but in the same time zone.

The song of the day is from Bob Seger, a Michigan native – “Roll Me Away”, which has the line “12 hours out of Mackinaw City”.

I am in America’s Dairyland and enjoyed an eclectic set of activities today.

I took a few pictures at Miller Field – if the Milwaukee Brewers had won the 7th game against the Dodgers, the Red Sox would have played in the World Series in this stadium. Then I went to the Mitchell Park Botanical Gardens, which are in three large domes – tropical, desert and show domes.

Milwaukee Art Museum has a large and diverse permanent collection, some of which I saw. There were two interesting special exhibits. William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French painter of history, portrait and genre works. He came a little before the Impressionists and was eclipsed by them but was very popular among American collectors. Sara Kwynar is a Canadian artist still in her 30’s with paintings and videos highlighting the continuing emphasis on the physical appearance of women.

The Jewish Milwaukee Museum showed a film interviewing about 10 women who had been in the partisan resistance movement during WWII. Then an amazing exhibit of Faye Schulman, a Polish teenage girl who took the only known photographs of partisans. At the bottom of her picture below she wrote “I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof”.

My last stop was the Octagon House, designed and built in the 1850’s – with a lot of advanced features – by John Richards, a native of Lanesboro Massachusetts who went to Wisconsin territory to run grist mills. Each floor has four large square rooms and four smaller miscellaneous triangular rooms to make the geometry work.

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Today’s song is Bruce again – “Cadillac Ranch”, which has the line “Drivin’ alone through the Wisconsin night”.

I crossed over the Mississippi River into Wisconsin this morning and I will be in the Eastern time zone by tomorrow night but I still have plenty to see in the Midwest.

My first stop today, the House on the Rock, is hard to describe in words or in pictures. Alex Jordan was a college dropout doing carpentry and construction work for his father in Madison Wisconsin. He often picnicked on top of a large glacier rock in Spring Green in the western part of the state and had the idea of building a house on top of that rock. And he did it – designing a room at a time in his head and transporting all the materials up by pulleys and ladders. Just for kicks, he later added an “Infinity Room”, which sticks out many feet over the valley without external structural support.

Then I travelled to Madison, whose downtown area is a drumlin between two large glacial lakes (like Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor). And the city was jam-packed, as it was graduation day at the University of Wisconsin.

I had a guided tour of the State Capitol building, capped off by a walk around the outdoor observation platform under the dome. Nearby were the Wisconsin Historical Museum and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, featuring Wisconsin’s participation in all of the country’s armed conflicts, all the way from the Civil War to Afghanistan.

I took some pictures of downtown Madison from across Lake Monoma and then drove to spend the night in Milwaukee.

Today’s song is the theme song from “Laverne and Shirley” – “Making Our Dreams Come True”. RIP – Penny Marshall!

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I am slipping. It was very late in my second and last day in Iowa when I realized I am in the land of the early presidential caucuses. I haven’t met any of the candidates – how is that possible?

More than usual, this was a day when I was running from one thing to another. I did a self-guided tour of the state capitol building in Des Moines – whose most interesting feature is a multi-level law library. Then I went to the town of Pella for a recreated Dutch village and windmill. Last weekend was Tulip Time so the village and the whole town were very colorful. Then the museum/library of Herbert Hoover in the small town of West Branch and the tiny two room house where his family of 5 lived until both of his parents died, he went to live with an aunt and uncle in Oregon and he went on to Stanford and history. Then I drove down the lane to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville and took a tour of the 100 year old farmhouse that was used to shoot the film 30 years ago.

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Finally I attended my second Friday night service in a small but very welcoming congregation in Dubuque.

Two songs in honor of the “Field of Dreams” film. “Center Field” by John Fogerty (and the sun did come out today for the first time in a week for me and it was 60 degrees). Also “Jessica” by the Allman Brothers, an instrumental that is playing while Ray and Terence Mann are driving. In the film, Ray is on a road trip, like me.

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I made my way on a cold windy day across western Iowa. I have definitely said farewell to the tall mountains and rock formations of the West.

My first stop was the Danish farming town of Elk Horn. I took pictures of a windmill and “Grandmother’s House” and visited the Danish Immigration Museum, which showed a few dozen ( out of 300,000) individual stories of why people emigrated from Denmark to the United States in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Perhaps the most well known of these is Victor Borge – see pictures.

While driving, Jay and I had our annual birthday conference call with our mother Adele. Unfortunately, Roy couldn’t get a good signal to dial in while traveling from Sedona to the Grand Canyon.

Then I spent a few hours at the Living History Farms, walking through actual and recreated farms of the Ioway tribe in 1700, a pioneer farm of 1850 and a mechanized farm from 1900. Then a ride on a cart driven by a John Deere tractor to an 1875 village with a mansion and barn in their original location, surrounded by typical stores, a school and a church of that era.

I made it to Des Moines and saw the state’s historical museum, with an exhibit called “Iowa 101”. Finally, the Des Moines Art Center, which had an open house with a singer playing the guitar and food and drink (my dinner!). It’s mostly modern art (not my favorite genre) but the center’s architecture is very interesting – three interconnected buildings in completely different styles.

Today’s song is “River City”, the name of the fictional Iowa town that’s the setting for Meredith Willson’s musical “The Music Man”.

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Pat and I were discussing in the car that if a group of historians voted for the 10 most important events in American history, the Lewis and Clark expedition and the transcontinental railroad would likely be on that list. Today we got more proof of that.

Under rainy but gradually drier skies, we visited the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center at the Havins Point Dam. This is one of 6 dams built on the Missouri River between South Dakota and Montana to control flooding and provide power and water for irrigation. There was a film about the entire expedition and we’re still amazed at how they carried all of their boats, horses and equipment over mountain passes and how they found their way through the complete unknown.

Remember the “Paper Clips” Holocaust project by the middle school in Whitwell, Tennessee. Today we saw an installation in a park done by the Columbus Nebraska High School honoring a Columbus native Andrew Jackson Higgins, who designed and produced all the amphibian boats used by the allies in WWII at the landings in North Africa, Sicily and D Day in Normandy. In addition to a model of a boat and statues of Higgins and military men, there was a steel fragment from Ground Zero and (best of all) actual sand from all of the beaches of the world where Higgins boats landed.

I dropped off Pat at the Ohama airport for her return flight. My GPS was playing tricks on us – we were on some obscure back roads with no clue we were anywhere near a major airport until all of a sudden it was there.

I visited the Durham Museum in the former Art Deco Union train station. The entrance is the huge waiting room/ticket office and I felt like I had had stepped into Grand Central Station and was still working. There were trains and trollies to board and an exhibit about the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as a lot about the history of Omaha, the eastern terminus of that railroad.

My two late stops were a “tribute'” to Rosenblatt Stadium, the home of the College Baseball World Series from 1950 to 2010 until it moved to a shiny new ballpark downtown – and a walk across the curving Bob Kerrey pedestrian bridge over the Missouri.

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The song of the day is the second straight by Bruce Springsteen and his fourth overall on the trip – “Nebraska”.

Only in South Dakota! Today, Pat and I saw: the world’s craziest and most publicized drug store; the world’s only Corn Palace; and an amazing piece of real estate called Badlands National Park.

I remember as a kid seeing signs or bumper stickers for Wall Drug Store, Wall SD. So we had to go. It’s a whole city block in the small town of Wall, with dozens of connected stores, western art exhibits, animated animals and even the Zoltan fortune telling machine from the movie “Big”.

At the end of the day, we witnessed the Corn Palace, an indoor arena where the outside is covered with murals made completely from corn, with a new set of murals made each year. It’s been there since 1890.

In between, on another raw rainy day, we were in Badlands, so named by the native peoples, the French trappers and the American settlers, because it’s so difficult to get across the wall of rock formations that cut the park in half and because the climate is so difficult for growing – too hot in summer, frigid in winter and only about 15 inches of rain annually. We saw a film and exhibits at the visitor center and then drove the scenic road, stopping every few moments for amazing overlooks and short hikes. The park is known around the world for its fossils – a discovery of a pre-historic type of rhinoceros in the mid-1800’s pretty much started the field of paleontology. Homesteaders grabbed their 160 acres of the land in the late 1800’s, but most of them couldn’t support themselves and moved on, which led to the creation of the national park. Many plants and animals thrive here, so maybe the Badland aren’t so bad!

Today’s song is – “Badlands” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – though he probably wasn’t talking about this park.

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I have had quite good fortune with weather so far on this trip, but today my luck ran out.

I left Bowman North Dakota at 5:15 this morning to meet up with my traveling companion for the next three days, Rachel’s brother Phil’s wife Pat, in Rapid City SD. The forecast was clear of rain or snow for the early morning. However, about an hour into my driving heavy snow started falling. I stopped on the side of the road a couple of times and thought I might be testing out the South Dakota road plowing equipment. But I proceeded very cautiously, the snow slowed down and then stopped and I made it to the Howard Johnson hotel about 8:45.

We went to Mount Rushmore in thick fog and we could just barely see the four faces. I am sending the clearest picture in a dim lot. I did get to see the visitor center exhibits, the film on the idea and execution of the sculpture and a short hike on the Presidential trail.

Then we went to the 100 year old Custer State Park and, following tips from a ranger at the visitor center, got to see pronghorn deer, a few bison and a herd of elk moving on top of the ridge. I have a decent video of the elk movement. We went on a hike by a campsite and a lodge.

Then we went back through some incredibly thick fog to Rapid City for dinner and walked around the cute Western town and some statues of all the presidents on downtown street corners.

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The song of the day is by Frank Sinatra singing “I have a Gal in North and South Dakota”.