Road Trip to Dearborn, MI: Sept. 2008

The goal of my trip was the Dymaxion house at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. I read about this house when I was in nursing school and have been intrigued by it ever since. During that time, the only one that was ever built was in Kansas, but then the Henry Ford museum bought it and restored it. I thought I'd wait until it was done, then throw in another decade for good measure, and finally go visit it.
I love a good road trip and so I added some destinations to make it even more fun: A zoo a day during my drive out there, the MI Renaissance Faire where my favorite singer in the world (after Ian Anderson) sings, and I even found out about a Reptile Expo that was less than 15 minutes from my Dearborn motel. It was an almost perfect trip, and great fun, and totally worth it. Here are some highlights.

9/8: The Ross Park Zoo in Binghamton, NY. River otters, and some cute little duckies. A crow exhibit (because Goddess knows you don't see those in nature).
I took over a thousand pictures on my trip, so I will make two more blog entries about it.
There are also some animal videos from my trip on my YouTube account (under "otterwoman", if you're interested.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/otterwoman



AFLAC!

9/9: The Pittsburgh Zoo. River otters, sea otters, and a really cool otter statue too.



I threw in some coins and wished for a perfect trip. It came true!

It was kind of overcast and rainy, which is great zoo weather, and animals (especially otters) are more active.
Here is my best shot of the WHOLE trip:



"Yo, wass crack-a-lackin', cuz?"

Wandering around armed for rain, I wondered and pondered, and I pass this along to you for feedback:
How old does an old maid have to be before she can start hitting "young whippersnappers" with her umbrella?



Live Long and Prosper!

9/10: The Akron Zoo, beautifully designed and redone. They also had a wonderful garden area.
When I win the Mega Millions lottery, I'm hiring their architect to design my yard.




About an hour from the Akron Zoo is the Cleveland Zoo. They have my favorite, Asian Small-Clawed Otters (aka "Mini Otters"). Two zoos in one day.

Afterwards, I was so pooped, I ended up picking the worst motel of my road trip career, and didn't have the energy to do anything about it.
I often slept in my car, to offset the increased price of gas. I have a Subaru station wagon, so I set up a sweet little bed in the back. But I needed a motel tonight, because I was going to be interacting with a real person tomorrow!

9/11: In the morning I made one of two detours during the trip to drive down an "Otter Creek Road"
(every state has at least one). This one is from Oregon, OH.



Then I arrived at the Toledo Zoo.

One of the highlights of my trip was a behind-the-scenes tour of the amphibian exhibit at the Toledo Zoo. (It pays to know people.) That's all I'll say now because that experience is getting its own blog entry.
There was a quote I liked in the bird house: "For 200 years, we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death."
-Tom McMillan (I'm not sure who he was. I googled the name, and there are many people who have it).
After the zoo, I found a nice motel and had a delicious dinner. It was a perfect day from start to finish.

9/12: The goal of my trip: the Henry Ford Museum. I also saw my first ever IMAX film. It was 3D! (I don't know if they all are).
The experience of seeing and touring the Dymaxion House was all I'd hoped it could be. I was in nerd heaven. I took a ton of pictures when the guide toured us through the house, and when I told him (and everyone else) I came from NY to see it, he looked at me oddly and said, "Look, there's an hour before the next tour. Go to town!" and he let me walk around in the house on my own and take even more pictures. I took the house tour twice, and saw each movie two times as well.



9/13: I started the day with the Reptile Expo in Taylor, which as it turned out, was very close to my motel. For a smaller expo, it had a great variety of animals. Someone was even selling hedgehogs, and while I was staring at them, the vendor plopped one in my hand. Great, there I was, starting to cry in front of a total stranger. "I had a hedgehog who lived for almost four years.
He just died last week."

After the Expo, I went to the zoo.

The Detroit Zoo was the only zoo besides the Toledo Zoo that had a separate amphibian exhibit (i.e. didn't combine the reptiles and amphibians).

I didn't get to add to my zoo penny collection here, though I got a zoo penny at every other zoo I visited (I collect them). I had to be satisfied with only a fridge magnet (which I also collect).
I got a fridge magnet at every stop on my trip.



But as a consolation for the lack of Penny Flattening machines, I did get a cool shirt like this! At the Pittsburgh Zoo, they had a T-shirt of a sea otter that was imbued with the smell of chocolate! Two of my favorite things. But they only came in kids sizes.
I have a poll question: what is cuter, a vicuna or a guanaco?

In MI, I returned all the empty soda cans that had been collecting in my car for TEN cents each, when I bought them all with only a FIVE cent deposit! Whoo-hoo! I used my windfall to buy a piece of chicken at the Kroger Supermarket.

9/14: The Michigan Renaissance Faire was a mosh pit! But I spent over an hour listening to the music of Owain Phyfe. He is awesome. "I think of him as the poor man's Ian Anderson," as I told his wife.
I spent 1 1/2 hours in a motel that night rinsing mud out of that dress. In the end, I saved it.



9/15: Today's plan was Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Zoo, but the stop was cancelled as remnants from a hurricane blew the city off the map. The power was out in most of the city (as well as Dayton OH). Eighty-mile-an-hour winds had made a shambles of the zoo. Gas stations were closed and I barely made it to electrified civilization with a quarter tank before I could gas up again. So I headed for the Columbus Zoo instead. What a great zoo to end the trip with. River otters, Small-clawed otters, and flying foxes that amazed me. I never saw anything like those foxes (more on them next time). I saw Fishing Cat kittens that interacted with me through the glass!




Reticulated Python:
I never thought there could be anything larger than my thigh.

I also learned two important things about penguins on my trip: #1- a penguin sure can hop! and #2- There is nothing cuter than a penguin in a hurry (not even a ferret named Dipsy).
There was a quote I liked in one of the exhibits:
"In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we know, and we will know only what we are taught." -Baba Dioum (Sengalese poet and conservationist).
9/16: I arrived home, a bit ahead of schedule due to the storm and some other factors. There was much more to my trip that I didn't go into, I could have written a short book about it (the diary I kept of my trip is, in fact, a small book): the totally gross motel room in Perrysburg OH with its own wetland outside the bathroom door, the quest for my sister's favorite beer sold only in the midwest, the detours to drive through places with "otter" in the name, looking for Long John Silver's restaurants to eat at, which I love and they don't have in my area, and the Books On CD I listened to: David Sedaris' When you are engulfed in flames (excellent) and Christopher Paolini's Eragon (which I also enjoyed very much). I took them out of the library right before I left. After two months, I'm STILL on the waiting list for Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse!

But I was ready to come home. Every fox or lion made me say, "I miss my cat Twinkie." The armadillo made me miss my hedgehog Piglet, though there was no going home to him anyway. Every lonely motel bed made me miss my faithful sleeping companions, Berry and Lily (more cats). The heavy rains made me worry about the salamander tanks in my basement, in case it flooded. But all was well.
There's no place like home.
In case you're wondering why I didn't miss my ferrets, it's because I didn't get the first one until about two weeks after I returned home from my trip.
And now I can never leave home, or those ferrets, ever again.

Margate, Home of the World's Largest Elephant

Lucy was built in 1881 at a cost of between $25,000 - $38,000 dollars by James V. Lafferty, Jr., engineer and inventor (d. 1989).
He made two others, neither of which survive.
The first was called "The Light of Asia," and was a 40-foot wooden elephant in what is now South Cape May (1884-1900).
The second was the "Elephantine Colossus" (122 feet high) at Coney Island, NY (1884-1896). For comparison, Lucy is 65 feet high.
She was built in what was then South Atlantic City (now Margate, New Jersey).



Lucy, in her present-day context.

She was purchased from Lafferty by Anton ("Anthony") Gertzen and later was
eventually bought by his third son, John.
He charged visitors 10 cents to tour it and climb the spiral stairway to the "howdah", or observatory, on its back.
(A "howdah" is the canopy covered basket that people sit inside
when they ride elephants or camels).

She was not originally named "Lucy," but received the name from one of the Gertzens.

Lucy has been used as a home, a tavern, and a tourist attraction.
Visitors included Woodrow Wilson, in 1916.



Entryway through her foot.

One leg is the entrance, the other is an exit.




What fun! I get to climb up inside an elephant that people lived inside!

Once you enter, you then climb these stairs.
The total is 350 steps from bottom to top.



The entrance stairs lead to an 18' x 18' reception room.

Here is a view of the inside: rather spacious, considering the outside; rather cramped, considering people lived here.



View in the opposite direction.

Lucy's body is 38 feet long and 80 feet in circumference. Her head is 16 feet long, her legs 22 feet long and 10 feet in diameter. Her ears are 17 feet long, each weighing about 2000 lbs. There are 22 windows.



The bathroom is in a closet in the front shoulder.



Here is a closer view.



The view of the beach from the howdah.

In 1970 the remaining Gertzens gave Lucy to the city of Margate and the land to a developer.
The Margate Civic Association had been formed to save Lucy from demolition.

On June 27, 1970, in a 7-hour trip, she was moved two blocks west to a piece of vacant beachfront property owned by the city. The move was tricky and expensive. The power and phone companies had to work with the movers.
The move cost $9000, plus $15,000 to make the new foundation.
Fundraisers paid for it, with the final $10,000 having been borrowed.

Luckily, the publicity of the move raised donations worldwide.



Our intrepid explorer and author.

The original howdah was torn off in a 1929 storm and replaced by a simpler one.



view of her head from the basket

Parking was fairly easy, I parked for free on a side street about two blocks away.




Detail of topmost roof




This place totally identifies itself with its elephant!!

In 1970 Lucy joined the National Register of Historic places (and so could get grants).

Extensive restoration work was necessary and in 1974 the public could once again tour Lucy.

Lucy requires a lot of maintenance, which the gift shop is not able to cover.
They have a website, and fortunately for all you elephant and architecture lovers, they accept donations!

You can be a Lucy Elefriend too:

See www.lucytheelephant.org

Kayaking on C------- Lake

Recently I went kayaking with some friends. The first was my boyfriend Dave. He doesn't want me to use his name in my blog, so let's just call him "Grumpet," which is what I usually call him anyway. The other was our friend, Marco.



As I approached this log, I overheard what sounded like a heated argument. It turned out to be a schizophrenic turtle arguing with itself: Intelligent design? No, you ninny, evolution; thus they went back and forth.



We were especially quiet as we nervously paddled by this witch's hut. I've seen them before, usually deep in the woods, covered with gingerbread, candy canes, and peanut M&Ms.



Here is the patriarch of the family of swans we see each year when we come here (see my profile picture). We like to squirt them with water pistols. Why? We're just bad people.
No, really, it's because the swan said I paddle like a girl.



Sometimes we don't bring a picnic, and we make "swamp sandwiches" instead. As you can see, they are nicely packaged and a convenient size for snacking.




Here is a picture of the Invisible Lake Monster. Notice the gleaming eyes, sharp fangs, and gruesome pincers. After I snapped this pic, I thought I heard some screaming but it must have been the choppy way my paddle hit the water (some might even call it "girlie"). Later, Grumpet and I realized that there were only two of us. I think Marco must have gotten bored and gone home early. I'm not sure because he hasn't called us in a while. Probably because he owes Grumpet forty bucks.



There were lots and lots of rare wildflowers and waterlilies, most likely because this is a protected nature sanctuary. A perfect place to get specimens for my garden, and I gathered a boatload. I'm tired of digging up the tulips from the credit union at night.



I always make sure to bring a large plastic garbage bag to neatly gather up our garbage. After we put all our trash inside, we usually fill it up the rest of the way with air and set it on the water, and take bets on how long it'll float before it sinks. I always win.



Finally we were tired and I was whiny. Grumpet says I was whiny and he was just tired of hearing it.

Either way, an ice cream sundae usually shuts me up, which was the perfect ending to a day of blue skies and twittering birdsong.

Newts

Newts

I think that I would well dispute
A poem cuter than a newt,

A newt with little orange spots,
A canvas for connect-the-dots.

Bright orange in her newtly grace,
So delicate and fair of face,

Or in her garb of olive-green,
There is no lovelier to be seen.

Your tree-trunk legs and spindly arms,
You pull my heart-strings with your charms.

Your dewlap pulsing in the night,
As I watch you from my human height;

Your tiny bulbous eyeball slits,
Reduce me down to itty-bits.

Your glistening and shiny skin,
Your purity and lack of sin;

I may recite, and play the lute,
But only God can make a newt.


(c) Otterwoman 2004


(with apologies to Joyce Kilmer ["Trees"], who,
did you all know, was a GUY?)

My ferret Dipsy does tricks!

I have three ferrets and I love them more than
any pet I've ever had. I've been trying to train them up
a bit.
The first ferret I got, Dipsy, is best at doing tricks.
Here he is doing his routine in early August.
This video is only 27 seconds long, so check it out!



If you are interested, you can see how much progress
Dipsy made since May, when he first started getting the tricks down.
This video is a short 47 seconds long, so it won't tie you up all day.



If you want to leave comments, please leave them
here on the blog, below, and not on facebook, thanks!

The New York Renaissance Faire, Tuxedo, NY

Hail fellow well met! Stand aside or I shall cleave thee in twain! My lord needs a jerkin!




These and other joyful phrases can be uttered and heard at a Renaissance Faire.


My boyfriend (who for professional reasons does not want to be named or appear in my blog) (well, he says "professional reasons," but I suspect that at times he's just plain embarassed to be my boyfriend) and I enjoy attending Renaissance Faires in the fall. For us, life is divided into three seasons: kayaking season, Ren Faire season (which partially overlaps with kayaking season) and VH-1 season.

These are the things we love about Ren Faires: dressing up, seeing and being seen, steak on a stake (for him) and cheesecake on a stick (for me), watching jousts, scantily clad fairy women (for him), and shopping (for me), witty entertainment, and living in a fantasy world for the day (although I try to live in a fantasy world every day).




Here we are at "The New York Renaissance Faire" in Tuxedo, NY
(www.renfair.com).
This is the entryway.



As you can see, it has everything!



It's very beautifully landscaped, and enjoyable just to walk through as a park.



There are "playtrons" ("player" plus "patron") in "Lady" and "wench" garb,



Men in scary garb,



Vendors in fairy garb,





And children enjoying themselves.



There is a lake with a sea monster,



Places to shop (incidentally, this is where I originally purchased the "Shoes Of Joy"!):



Beasts selling jewelry,




Tests of strength,



Talented entertainment,



and a kissing bridge! Here I am with my boyfriend.



And of course, the joust.



One final word, ladies: please, if you choose not to dress in costume,
that doesn't mean you don't have to pay any attention to details!



For more on Renaissance Faires, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_fair