BOX 185: Sheboygan and Beyond.

I can't identify the place where this late-afternoon photo was taken, but Becky is wearing a Niagara Falls T-shirt, so it was after we'd visited the Falls on our 1991 car trip, which took us--Anne and me and the kids--from Sheboygan down to Kentucky and up to Cleveland, Western Pennsylvania (where part of my father's family lives) and up to Niagara Falls, returning through Windsor/Detroit. It could be the Niagara Falls Botanical Gardens.

This post, spanning Halloween 1990 to mid-summer 1991, will be a short one, because (1) I took surprisingly few photos during that span of time, even on the trip, and (2) I was surprisingly careless in taking most of them (i.e., surprising to me now, as I continue to scan my slide boxes); several are too underexposed to include here even for the historical record.

But here is what I can offer. First, our carved jack o'lanterns displayed on our front porch:

Second, a shot of Michelle with another family cat, Cotton. (See previous posts for numerous other Michelle + cat pics!)

Third, our first Christmas tree, December 1990:

(Disappointingly, a couple of family photos, taken sans flash, are way too dim to be saved even with digital manipulation.) Next, a couple of food pics: first, some lamb chops and veggies that Anne is serving in one of our wedding gifts from our friend Estie:

And that spring or early summer, a festive chicken and rice platter. I don't know what the occasion was, but there must have been guests:

Anne beautifully fixed up the little patch of garden in our back yard with annuals and a few perennials. I can't decide which of the near-identical photos I took is better, so I'll include both:

I took one photo of the local Memorial Day parade that year: too bad it wasn't in sharper focus:

Our goal in driving to Kentucky was mainly to visit Mammoth Cave. But we stopped overnight in Louisville, and just before crossing the Ohio River to that city I took several photos, including a couple with Aron and one with Anne:

I recall going to a museum or two in Louisville but not anything else; I assume the Victorian house I took a picture of was in that city. For Mammoth Cave I have only a photo of the steps going down into the entrance:

But I took quite a few photos of the Green River inside the National Park; it appears that we took a boat tour, which included a view of the car ferry that still operates:

We camped somewhere that evening, probably inside the National Park:

The next day we visited Lincoln's Birthplace, i.e., the replica log cabin enshrined inside a huge neoclassical monument:

I recall enjoying driving through northern Kentucky, where some horse farms were protected from the highway by white fences that fit my image of the state:

We passed tobacco farms too, and were impressed by the size of the leaves. Here is a shot of one kid, probably Aron, hiding behind a tobacco leaf we purloined from the side of the road, plus one definitely of Aron:

We spent a night in Cincinnati, dining in an Italian restaurant in a historic neighborhood on a hill, and then drove up to see my family in Cleveland. My niece, Clair, had recently been born: here she is by herself and with her father, Tom:

And here she is with Michelle and Aron:

Ellen, her mother, is seen here with Michelle and Anne. (Quite a change in hairstyle for Michelle compared to the previous fall.)

We next drove out to Pennsylvania and stayed overnight with my Uncle Angie and Aunt Cil. I'm disappointed (once again) that I took no photos of the whole family together. The only ones I have are of an old bridge along the side of a road (like ones I used to cross when I was a little boy) and of Aron, Becky and Michelle crossing it:

And finally, I have exactly one shot of Niagara Falls: or rather, of Anne and the kids rather dimly seen at a viewing platform:

I must have figured that I had taken enough pics of the Falls themselves the last time I'd visited, in 1985 (cf. BOXES 161-162). I'm glad to say that I have much better documentation -- more photos and much better quality -- of our next big trip, to Hawai'i in the summer of 1992. I'll report on the first leg of that trip in my next post.