Wisconsin Continues to Impress

 

 

We followed the Great Lakes Road Tour south from Door County to stay as close to the Lake Michigan shoreline as the roads would allow.   There are soooo many really, really pretty cities along the lake front in Wisconsin.  A lovely drive.

This odd pic is the skeleton of a light house in Lake Michigan, in the picturesque waterfront city of  Port Washington, WI.  It has lost its light.   We've seen a lot of light houses all spiffed and polished, but ya'll know, I like skeletons.

Although this light house isn't an example, it is worth mentioning that we've also seen a lot of evidence of the strong weather that's been reported across the midwest. We've been fortunate enough to figure out how to avoid it.  We do offer this picture of the flooded Sheboygan river as evidence that a lot of folks have had a very tough spring and early summer.

We saw a lot of tornado damage in Oklahoma which we didn't photograph because well, Bill doesn't like to stop the forward progress of the van.  And more tornado damage occurred near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  

We did Volksmarch #82 in Milwaukee, a city we found to be gorgeous and vibrant.  Incredible museums and a walk along Lake Michigan shoreline.  Complete with a spiffed and polished light house to visit (which we didn't -- we've visited many light houses).  Not as much street art as other cities we've visited, but that's more than made up for by magnificent architecture from several different periods.  Here's their city hall (I looked it up -- Flemish Renaissance Revival Architecture) reflected in a modern sky scraper.

The best part of #VanLife is getting to see folks we can't see often, or have only met on line.   Ann and Richard, friends and colleagues in our CCC Sunrise circle, treated us to a magnificent evening at their country club in Racine, Wisconsin.  We even got to meet their son, Evan-- the executive chef at the club.  We should mention here that the meal was very good! 

Ann had talked about a place we'd never even heard of so on an impulse on a very rainy Friday we took a 50 mile side trip to tour it:   the Yerkes Observatory near Lake Geneva, WI.   Fantastic!  If you are ever close, check this place out! 

 Forgive us as we TOTALLY GEEK OUT out for the rest of this post about Yerkes:

Completed in 1892, this was THE premier observatory in the early 20th Century.  Just a little bit of name dropping here:  George Hale  (early 20th C -- studied the sun and founded the Mt. Wilson Observatory) was the founding director, and Carl Sagan worked here.  Unfortunately as the sciences of astronomy and astrophysics outgrew Yerkes, the observatory was abandoned by its founding institution, The University of Chicago.  A private foundation has acquired it now and put Denns Kois in place as its director.  Kois  has a magnificent vision for Yerkes.  He's creating a true STEAM center that will allow the intersection of the science and arts.   

Kois has also prioritized retrieving the data contained in the glass plate photographs of the night sky, all the hand-written lab notebooks, and old equipment still at Yerkes.  We visited a library of over 180,000 plates where we met  two busy undergraduate interns.  

The grounds of the observatory were designed by the Olmstead Firm and Kois is rescuing them as well.  Because of the rain, we had to forego the grounds;  even so, it was worth every minute and every mile of our trip to see it.  

 Kois is making the building safe again (think knob and tube wiring for example), restoring its glorious and somewhat sassy Beaux Arts and Romanesque architecture. (I looked that one up, too)...

Above is one of the many carvings of Yerkes himself.  The sculptor has depicted him as a devilish character.  His wealth allowed him to donate all the money and his name  to the observatory.  Even  so he wasn't well liked-- he had some unscrupulous business practices and multiple marriages.  Not a thing in the 19th Century.

This is the largest dome and its still-working telescope:

This  40" refracting telescope is in the largest of the domes.  It remains the largest refracting telescope in the world!  Fascinating fact:  In order to keep it from moving when movement would have distorted the pictures it took of the night sky, no part of this telescope  is  attached to any part of the building, even the floor beneath it.  It is secured by a pier in the bedrock under the building. Then the building was built around it. The drawing from their website makes it make a little more sense.

This is a newer reflecting, and sill-functioning, 40" telescope in one of the smaller domes.   

The grunt work necessary for any science,  today or long ago,  was done either by graduate students, today or long ago,  or women.  They were the ones staying up all night, moving the telescopes manually, and producing lots of plate glass photographs.    The graduate students had a dorm in the attic of this non-air conditioned building where they slept during the day.   The women, just because they were women, were not allowed to obtain the necessary education to be full-on astronomers. They held the title of computer (like in the movie Hidden Figures). Sort of takes all the romance out of it, doesn't it?

I grabbed this picture in the rain from the parking lot as we were leaving.  It is a picture of a smaller dome (forefront) and the big dome.

The antiquity of Yerkes does not diminish the work that was done there or the value held by the data still housed there.  We applaud the incredible work that was done here and is being done here.

A final note: Baby Beluga is getting a break.  She will rest for the next several days in Chicago while  we'll be listening to the clickety-clack of Amtrak wheels, accompanied by our grandson on our way to and from Glacier National Park.  Hopefully our next entry will be guest-authored by William from GrampCamp.  We'll see.  

Retirement Lesson Learned:   Take the back roads, find the unexpected treasures.

Woyaya