Museums – The Destinators

Caraquet, deux

This visit to Caraquet was different from our first visit in 2023. My maternal grandparents and generations of ancestors were born and lived here and I’ve heard about the town since I was a kid. In 2023, we aimed to check out the town. The town is in a pretty location on the Baie des Chaleurs (Bay of Warmth), on a peninsula in northern New Brunswick. We loved it! The arts community, the funky restaurants, the murals, the beaches, the marinas, the bay, the outdoor gathering spots all caught our attention. We (literally) sought out signs of my ancestors and found street signs with the Morais family name.

The east side of PEI

By PEI standards (I wish to stress that this is an important qualifier here), the east side of the island was quiet, laid back, and less touristy. It was also geologically different – again, by PEI standards – hillier, more trees, fewer huge flat farms. According to locals (and backed up by the Potato Museum), we learned that the soil on the west side of the island is perfect for large-scale agriculture, while on the east side… not so much. There are farms, to be sure, however the east is also home to some forestry and a few sawmills. As on the west side, there are lovely red beaches and cliffs along the shore, and lots of lighthouses, along with the agriculture and fish processing.

PEI’s west coast

From the north coast we set off to explore the west coast of PEI. The drive was quite pretty as we passed miles of tidy, colorful potato, corn and wheat fields. Relatively flat with rich red soil, it seems every bit of land that is not used for a house, a church or a music venue is used for agriculture. Taking back roads as much as possible, we also passed through bunches of tiny towns, a handful of big ones, and more of the red coastline’s alternating cliffs and beaches.

The Edge of Fundy, part 2 – Chignecto Bay

Although we were still on the shore of the Minas Basin, our first interpretive centre/museum stop heading north was all about… dinosaurs? Ok, yes – and the tides that help to uncover their fossils. The Fundy Geological Museum in Parrsboro has close ties to the Joggins Fossil Cliffs of Chinecto Bay (both are UNESCO World Heritage Centres), so let’s just start there.

Strataca – Kansas Underground Salt Museum – Hutchinson, KS

Old Carey Salt Company salt car on abandoned rail

In 1923, the Carey Salt Company in Hutchinson, KS dropped a mine shaft 650 feet below the earth’s surface to tap into a large salt deposit. This salt deposit, formed 275 million years ago, is one of the world’s largest and spans much of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The mine has been in continuous operation since it opened, changing ownership a few times. The mine is now owned by the Hutchinson Salt Company and it yields about 5,000 tons of salt every day, most of it used for ice-melting applications and various other industrial and agricultural purposes. Table salt, also produced in this region though not at this mine, is extracted in a very different process that involves pumping fluids down to the salt layer to dissolve salts and pumping the solution back to the surface for refining.

There are 14 other salt mines in the US. The only mine that offers underground tours is this one in Hutchinson – the Kansas Underground Salt Museum – which is now run by a non-profit educational foundation called Strataca.

Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Park – Topeka, KS

On our last trip through Kansas (nine years ago!), we wrote that Kansas had no national parks for us to see. That changed in 2022 – and that change has (so far) withstood our government’s renewed scrutiny of National Park Service facilities.

Goin’ to Kansas City…

Kansas City, here I come. I’m gonna be standing on the corner – the corner of Twelfth Street and Vine…

…with my Kansas City baby, and a bottle of Kansas City wine.

St Louis and Columbia

Photo of the 150-year old Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River (Missouri History Museum)

A favorite part about being in the midwest is catching up with members of my family that we don’t get to see very often. With the A/C saga behind us, we aimed for Missouri where temps were forecasted to hover around 100. Does the outdoor thermometer on the RV get to 3-digit numbers?

Tulsa, part 2 – a difficult history

Our plan was to head northwest from Tulsa to meet our friends and fellow travelers Mark and Linda who were going to be in southern Colorado. Unfortunately, their motorhome had a mechanical problem which forced them to skip their rendezvous with us in favor of a visit to the Sprinter dealer, way up in Denver. Though we were sorry to miss our friends, a consolation prize for us was that, if we weren’t heading to Colorado, we could slow down on our push to Albuquerque. We started by extending our stay in Tulsa to take care of a couple of necessities (like laundry) and see a little more of the city. The Arts District we talked about in the previous post is adjacent to, and partly within, the Greenwood section, which was once known as Black Wall Street. Over the past few years, along with many others, we learned for the first time of the history of that area – in particular, of the horrific events that took place there a little more than a century ago, hidden and suppressed for most of the ensuing years. To learn more, we visited the Greenwood Rising History Center.

Tulsa, part 1 – music appreciation

Painting of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie by John Mellancamp

We had a couple of free days between St Louis and our next destination in Colorado. We were trying to decide between a couple rest days – just hang, read, play piano/guitar – or swing through Tulsa, OK to visit the Bob Dylan Center we’d read about. When Suzy told us that the Woodie Guthrie Center is adjacent to the BDC and those rest days evaporated!