Author: Dan Griswold

People occasionally ask me for book recommendations. I’m happy to oblige! Below are books I’ve read over the years that I would heartily recommend to anybody who hasn’t had the opportunity to read them yet.

They’re grouped into four categories: History and Biography; Fiction; Religion and Theology; and Political Economy. Most recommendations come with a sentence or two about the work.

History and Biography

At the top of my list:

Alexander Hamilton and Grant by Ron Chernow. Both books are masterful at painting their subjects and their times, capturing the sweep of history as well as the telling detail.

Anything by David McCullough. Truman is at the top of the list, followed by The Wright Brothers, John Adams, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914, and The Johnstown Flood. I just finished Mornings on Horseback, the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s early years, including his time in the Badlands of North Dakota.

Anything by Erik Larson. My favorite is Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, a vivid account of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, still the deadliest natural disaster in American history. Other favorites are The Devil in the White City, about a devious serial murderer operating on the fringes of the 1893 Chicago world’s fair; and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I first read this in my 20s and it had a profound effect on my view of the socialist experiment. I recommend the one-volume, abridged version, published with the author’s approval and input.

The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War and Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts. Roberts plumbs new sources and weaves a compelling narrative to illuminate these two well-covered subjects. My favorite story from the Churchill biography is the speech Harry Hopkins gave in Glasgow in January 1941, quoting the book of Ruth. It made Churchill weep.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. The movie was good, but the book is even better. The story of Louis Zamperini’s conversion was as compelling to me as his survival and imprisonment in the Japanese POW camp.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose. Compelling story of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. A one-volume history of the Civil War, not just the battles but also the economic and cultural forces that stoked the conflict.

More History

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs. This one-volume history is a heavy lift at 900 pages but my reward was a much deeper appreciation for English history and how it has shaped their and our own culture and politics today.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer. A one-volume history of the regime by an American reporter who witnessed much of it from inside Germany.

Night by Elie Wiesel. The dark night of the Nazi death camps was broken by American tanks.

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum. A more comprehensive companion to Solzhenitsyn’s work.

To round out the tour of 20th century totalitarianism, I recommend Mao’s Great Famine: The History Of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 and The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976 by Frank Dikötter.

On the other world war, I recommend The First World War by John Keegan and A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front by Winston Groom.

The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat by Bob Drury. My son Paul recommended this one. It’s the story of a band of outnumbered Marines who held out against waves of Chinese attacks under brutal winter conditions during the Korean War. I’ll never forget the scene when relief finally arrived on a distant ridge.

Two books by Candice Millard: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President tells the story of how the admirable President Garfield died at the hands of an assassin and an incompetent doctor; and The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey recounts the ex-president’s almost fatal adventure down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon.

Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69 by Stephen E. Ambrose. This book made me appreciate the work of Chinese immigrants in building the difficult section through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War; and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. The former expanded my meager knowledge of 17th-century America, including the beautiful image of the “praying Indians.” The latter begins with an encounter with a whale that would inspire Herman Melville to write Moby Dick.

Lone Star: A History of Texas and The Texans by Fehrenbach, T.R. A rich, one-volume history of the state that captures its culture and “brooding immensity.” (I read it during our month of travel through Texas in May 2021.

More Biography

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography by Charles Moore. This is another commitment, but if you admire Mrs. Thatcher and have an interest in British and Cold War politics, all three volumes are magnificent: Volume One: From Grantham to the Falklands; Volume Two: At Her Zenith: In London, Washington and Moscow; and Volume Three: Herself Alone. (Based on Moore’s impeccable scholarship, I was well equipped to expose the inaccurate and unfair caricature of Mrs. Thatcher in the fictional drama “The Crown” in this essay.)

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 by William Manchester. Another masterful portrait of a man and his time.

Gladstone: A Biography by Roy Jenkins. Gladstone is perhaps my favorite politician of all-time. He was right on the major issues of his time, including free trade, and he was a serious Christian who practiced his faith in public and private.

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff.

Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass.

Man on the brink

My friend Mac Olson would appreciate this sub-category. These are all riveting stories of people confronting circumstances that both defy and capture the imagination.

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. Nothing I’ve read in the genre tops this incredible story of survival.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer. Once I started reading this book, I could not put it down.

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger. You know the cliche, but here is the real thing. Unforgettable descriptions of mammoth waves and what it’s like to drown.

Unsinkable: The Full Story Of The RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler. The true story behind the blockbuster movie, comprehensively and expertly told.

Fiction

Two novels and a novella by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward; In the First Circle: The First Uncensored Edition; and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. These are all technically fiction, but based on the author’s experience in the Soviet prison camp system. All are filled with unforgettable characters living under circumstances that we thankfully can only dimly imagine. I discuss the first two works and The Gulag Archipelago in this blog post in May.

Anything by Tom Wolfe. Of his fiction books, I enjoyed The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I am Charlotte Simmons. [Among his non-fiction works, let me sneak in plugs for The Right Stuff and The Kingdom of Speech, the latter a fascinating tour of the development of human of language, in particular how the theory of evolution struggles to explain this human faculty.]

Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky. No author I’ve read plunges the depths of the human soul like the 19th-century Russian. The Possessed offers an all-too-modern look into the mentality of violent political fanatics. His short story White Nights is captivating.

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. My daughter Emily read this in high school and recommended it. It tells the story of Christian conversion, love and survival in the pagan Roman empire.

A River Runs Through It by Norman McLean. A beautiful memoir of growing up in Montana.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. This is nothing like the the popular perception based on movie adaptations. It’s a haunting story of human pride and an inhuman desire for revenge.

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Moby Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville.

Heart of Darkness, Typhoon and Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.

The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark.

Religion and Theology

Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Systematic in explaining and defending the reformed faith, and also devotional in its warm-hearted appeal to Christians to live out their faith. I recommend either (or both!) the final 1559 version, a two-volume set edited by John T. McNeill, and/or the 1541 “Essentials” Edition, translated by Robert White, which is a few hundred pages shorter.

The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. An unforgettable journey to the Celestial City.

Knowing God by J.I. Packer. I learned a lot about the Holy Spirit from this book.

Confessions by Augustine. Written 1,600 years ago but modern in its personal and confessional style.

Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen. Machen said later that this would have been better titled Christianity and Modernity. In critiquing the liberal church of his day, he lays out in clear and learned prose the essentials of the Christian church and faith.

Anything by C.S. Lewis. Beyond the usual favorites, such as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Lertters, I would recommend Miracles, The Abolition of Man, and God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics.

A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph by Sheldon Vanauken. A beautiful story of how losing what you love most in this world can lead to finding eternal joy in Christ.

The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande. Biblical, practical lessons in making and keeping peace with your neighbor.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe.

Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith by Chad B. Van Dixhoorn.

Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand. Heart-wrenching ordeal of a pastor serving the Lord faithfully under the especially cruel communist regime of Romania.

Political Economy

The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek. His The Road to Serfdom is more widely read, but this longer work lays out in a powerful and comprehensive way the rules for a free society.

Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton Friedman. You can’t beat Friedman for stating the case for a free economy and society in a civil and engaging way.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. A must read if you want to understand today’s headlines about ports, container ships, and supply chains.

Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy by Douglas A. Irwin. If you are into trade policy, this is THE definitive history of how our nation escaped from protectionism to a more open and interconnected economy.

The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner. An engaging tour of the great economic thinkers of the past few centuries.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing by Burton G. Malkiel. This book, along with Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies (5th edition) by Jeremy Siegel and The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle, taught me how to manage our retirement portfolio without paying high fees to “active fund” managers. (I distilled what I learned into this essay, Saving for Retirement — What Every Millennial Should Know.)

Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization by Daniel Griswold. This book is last and arguably least in this august list, but how could I not recommend my own work? Seriously, although it was written a decade ago, this is a clear and comprehensive explanation why Donald Trump and the AFL-CIO are wrong about trade and globalization, and how trade makes our lives better every day.

DUMFRIES, Va.—After nearly eight months on the road, we spent a few days at our home base of Northern Virginia this week, closing a grand loop we traveled around the United States that you can see on the map below. Our journey began when we left the area on Feb. 9 and covered 10,500 miles towing the travel trailer, 63 campgrounds, 24 states, 22 national parks, and reunions with family and friends from California to Michigan.

We survived challenges along the way, as I described in this post in August, but on the whole our adventure has been a great success. It’s allowed us to see places and people we would probably not get to see if we had needed to book a regular kind of vacation, with flights, hotels, and rental cars.

Among the more memorable moments for me were wading up the Rio Grande River through the Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, hiking to the top of Yosemite Valley, stalking wild bison in Yellowstone and the Dakotas, and swimming in the blue expanse of Lake Superior. (I’ll write a separate post soon rating the national parks we visited.) As for family, we saw all three of our children, siblings, nephews, a niece, and all 14 of my late mom and dad’s great grandchildren (in order of our visits: Davis, Mae, Max, Clara, Aben, Owen, Gabriella, Grace, Milo, Alina, Evvie, Elise, Finn, and Ford).

We’ve interacted with all kinds of people in the campgrounds where we’ve stayed. People in RV parks are almost always friendly and represent a cross-section of Americans. The most well represented groups are middle-class retirees like us, followed by parents on vacation with their kids (mostly during the summer), and people living in their RVs as they try to get established. In Lemon Cove, CA, our neighbor Brian and his family were living in an RV they bought and had towed to the site while they looked for permanent housing and a truck that could pull the RV. In Colorado Springs, CO, David and his family were living in the RV next door while they looked for a home they could afford. (See my July review of the book and movie “Nomadland” for more on this phenomenon.) The oldest RVer we met was a 98-year-old man at the campground near Yosemite who was still towing a fifth-wheel (with his daughter and son-in-law accompanying him in their small motor home).

We have our challenges as a nation, but I can report from spending most of 2021 traveling from one end of this country to the other and back that large swaths of America remain peaceful, prosperous, and friendly. The towns we stayed in and passed through weren’t so much divided by rich and poor as by those that are thriving and those that are just hanging on or slowly fading. Such places as Red Lodge, MT, Cody WY, Port Angeles WA, Placerville CA, are not enclaves for the rich, but they are prospering towns with well-kept businesses and neighborhoods. We also drove through small towns that were marked with boarded up storefronts and an older stock of houses. The roads and bridges that carried us on our way were generally in good shape, contrary to the claims of “crumbling infrastructure.”

Traveling by RV is a great way to see the country but it also has its limitations. It’s an ideal way to visit friends and family, allowing us to see them without asking for a place to stay. We can also host people for a cookout or time around the campfire. It’s more like being their temporary neighbors than houseguests. For a longer trip, traveling by RV saved us from expenses for flights, rental cars, hotels, and eating out for just about every meal. It’s a minor miracle that we can drive down the road 200 miles to a completely new place and still inhabit our 227-square-foot efficiency apartment with all our familiar stuff.

One limitation of RV travel is flexibility. It’s much more difficult to stray from the path between destinations to visit some interesting site. Somebody called it the “hub and spoke” approach to travel: We travel straight to our next campground destination, and then unhitch the truck to explore what we can from our new base camp. That means if there’s an interesting spot halfway between two campgrounds, we might need to drive 100 miles or more each way to reach that spot. It means we’ve missed a few tourist sites that we could have more easily bagged if we had just been driving a car.

Another running issue in an RV is connectivity. Many of the places we stayed at were in beautiful natural surroundings but far from an urban area with a cellular signal. Campground wi-fi is notoriously spotty. One place told us, “Remember, this is country wi-fi,” meaning the signal was weak and prone to be overloaded. Some parks specifically prohibited streaming. We paid Verizon for a “jet pack” that converts the local cell signal into a wi-fi hotspot in our camper. But we also pay extra for the data we stream through it, which is limited and good for three or four movies at most before the monthly data allotment is used up.  Often our best connection is using our iPhones as hotspots, but the data is limited there, too. As a result, we were forced in some places to travel to hill tops or parks in town to get a decent signal. (Here’s a photo I posted back in June of Elizabeth filing the church prayer list from a park in Coulee City, WA.)

Yet another challenge has been finding Christian fellowship. In our entire time on the road, we made a point not to travel on Sundays so that we could find a place to worship with other believers and rest from our regular duties. We looked for reformed Presbyterian churches when nearby, but we also saw this as an opportunity to experience how other Christians worship on Sundays. We’ve been to Baptist and Lutheran churches, a big, contemporary non-denominational church, and a “cowboy church” (in Texas, of course!).  We’ve missed the regular fellowship and accountability of the local church, but in every one of the places of worship we visited, the people were welcoming and the gospel was preached.

Life on the road can also be an interior journey. I’ve learned more about myself, on the upside as well as the downside. Without any prior training, I found out I can hitch, tow and back a 7,000-pound trailer and fix quite a few problems myself as they come up. Elizabeth and I have also learned more about working together as a couple. (Guys, it’s a beautiful sight to see your spouse wielding a rubber mallet to pound an iron bar into submission.) But living in a confined space also limits the opportunities to go off and do things on your own. I’ve had to learn a few lessons on this trip about holding my tongue more often, conceding the last word in a discussion, and being content to let things work themselves out.

Being retired from any paid work, I’ve also had more time to read in the RV. Since we set sail in February, I’ve read about 20 books, mostly on history, but also about science and geology. It’s a wonderful fact that when you’ve lost yourself in a book, it doesn’t matter if your easy chair is in an RV or a mansion. I’ve had the pleasure of reading about the naturalist John Muir while we explored the places he loved, and most recently about Theodore Roosevelt’s “mornings on horseback” with our memories still fresh from our time in the Badlands of North Dakota.

Elizabeth and I are both grateful to God for this opportunity to see all these places in the United States that are so full of history and beauty. And we’re thankful that over these almost eight months and more than 10,000 miles that we’ve been spared any accidents or major problems with the rig. And we’re thankful for the great time we’ve had as temporary neighbors to the family and friends we’ve been able to visit.

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Although we’ve completed the loop, our journey continues. We left our base in Northern Virginia yesterday to spend a few days at a campground near the beach in Rodanthe on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Over the next few weeks we’ll continue to travel south along the coast, enjoying the sights and the relatively warmer weather until we return to our home in Vienna toward the end of the year. In the meantime, you can pray we won’t need to ride out any hurricanes in the RV!

DAWSON, W. Va. — Our campground is located on a ridge in the south central part of this scenic state just off Interstate 64 about 20 miles west of Lewisburg. We’re treated to nice sunrises over the fields to the east and sunsets behind the wooded hills to the west.

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On Sunday afternoon, after attending a local church, we strolled the grounds of the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs. We’d never been to this famous resort even though we’ve lived next door in Virginia for more than 20 years. It reminded us of the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado or the Grand Hotel in Michigan, but with a distinct southern decor and atmosphere. (Elizabeth is looking a bit too much at home in the photos, don’t you think?) When we stopped at the security gate to enter, one of the young men smiled when we said we we’re the Griswolds. This isn’t the first time on our trip that our surname has been a source of amusement! 

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On Monday, we hiked along the rim of the New River Gorge, America’s newest national park. From the Grandview overlook, we gazed down on the river 1,400 feet below. Then we hiked 1.5 miles out and back along the Grandview Rim Trail to the Turkey Spur Overlook, where we could see the river flowing one direction before us and the other direction behind us. The Castle Rock portion of the trail took us alongside steep sandstone cliffs bending out over the trail. The day was clear and in the 70s, but shaded most of the way.  

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On the north end of the park, near Fayetteville, we crossed the New River Gorge Bridge and then looked up in wonder at its immense arch at the lookout at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center. Opened in 1977, the bridge is billed by the park service as “a work of structural art — the longest steel span in the western hemisphere and the third highest in the United States.” It’s the second time in two weeks that we’ve crossed a bridge billed as “the longest of its type in the hemisphere.” (The Mackinac Bridge is the other.)

Providing background music for this leg of our journey has been “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by John Denver. West Virginia’s beautiful rivers and wooded mountains give it as good a claim as anywhere we’ve seen to be “almost heaven,” and its country roads are taking us home to the place where we belong. 

DAWSON, W. Va. – On our way from Michigan to West Virginia last week, we encamped for a few days in the southwest corner of Ohio, where we trekked across the Ohio River for day trips to the Creation Museum and the nearby Ark Encounter in neighboring Kentucky.

Both attractions are well done and engaging to the mind and the heart. On Thursday, we toured the exhibits and the grounds at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. The museum is a serious effort to explain the world as we see it today in light of the creation story in the Bible. The museum was busy but not overcrowded on the day we visited. Among the exhibits that impressed us most were those on life in the womb, and on the Bible’s clear message against racism. We missed the presentation on snakes, but as you can see, I did get to hang out with one of the exhibits, a live ball python! And as a wonderful bonus, while we were wandering through the surrounding gardens, we crossed paths with Dale and Linda McLane, a dear couple we knew from our time at Grace PCA in Colorado Springs.

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On Friday we drove a few miles further into Kentucky to see the Ark Encounter in Williamstown. The main attraction is a life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark, as described in Genesis 6. More than 500 feet long, it’s an awesome sight to behold! Inside the ark’s three decks, we viewed more exhibits, as well as the human and animal living quarters as the designers of the modern ark thought they might have looked in Noah’s time. Like the Creation Museum (both projects of the Answers in Genesis organization), the Ark Encounter seeks to explain the global flood and how life on earth could have emerged from the ark in its aftermath thousands of years ago. Whatever your views on the subject, both the museum and ark will give you plenty to think about.

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We arrived yesterday at a campground in south central West Virginia, somewhere between Beckley and Lewisburg off Interstate 64. Our plan this week is to spend a day in the nation’s newest national park, the New River Gorge. Then we’ll head north to the RV dealership near Weston that sold us the Hideout for a few repairs, including the left front skirting that we lost in California back in April. At the end of the week we’ll be heading back to Northern Virginia for a few days to see friends and attend our home church next Sunday.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – We left Michigan yesterday after two weeks in the Great Lakes State. Among the highlights of the past week were revisiting Mackinac Island, exploring the towering dunes along Lake Michigan, and enjoying another of the state’s “roadside parks.”

Last week, we caught a ferry from St. Ignace to Mackinac Island, where my family and I had vacationed in the late 1960s. They don’t allow any cars on the island, so we paid a bit extra to take our bikes along with us. Our ferry ride included a side trip to view the Mackinac Bridge, which spans the Straights of Mackinac, connecting the Upper Peninsula with lower Michigan.

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On the island, we rode our bikes to the Arch Rock, past Fort Holmes, down to the British Landing, and then back along the lakefront to the Grand Hotel. We paid $10 each to enter the hotel, where we enjoyed a pear cider on the expansive porch. I have a fleeting memory of staying at the hotel when I was about 10. It was the most exotic vacation my family took when I was a kid. I remember riding a bike on the island, and enjoying the big swimming pool in front of the hotel.

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Elizabeth seemed to take special pleasure in viewing the site where the British and their Menominee Indian allies beat back an American force on August 4, 1814. The British had seized the island at the beginning of the War of 1812, and successfully held on to it until the end of the war in 1815. Fort Holmes at the high point of the island is named for an American officer killed in the battle.

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Later in the week, we towed the RV across the Mackinac Bridge to a campground near Traverse City. On Friday we spent a few hours under balmy skies climbing to the top of the Sleeping Bear Dunes that rise hundreds of feet above the shores of Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful sight to look across the blue green waters to see these huge sand bars rising above the surf. We walked together to the top of two overlooks, and then I hiked on my own for about two-thirds of the Dunes Climb Trail before turning back. My nephew Tom Griswold had warned us not to climb down the dunes to the lakeshore because it’s a bear to climb back up. We had no trouble resisting the temptation, but we did see two young women laboring to climb back up a 400-foot dune at one of the overlooks. (You can see them on the lower left photo.

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We ended our fortnight in Michigan by spending a few nights at the farmhouse of our long-time friends Jeff and Anita Caspers northeast of Grand Rapids. Looking back on our time in this wonderful state, we’ll remember the beauty of the lakes, especially at sunset. The moderating effect of the lakes on the weather also allows an abundance of wineries and apple, pear, and cherry orchards.

As we drove through the state, we also appreciated the many roundabouts, an English invention that allows a smoother flow of traffic, and the many “Roadside Parks.” The parks are small rest stops along secondary highways that are often located by the lakeshore or other scenic spots. We liked the fact that the parks can accommodate RV parking. We could not only pull over for a bathroom break—a factor of growing importance these days—but we could wade in the water at a picturesque spot. The photos below were taken at a roadside park on our way to Traverse City. You can see how close to the lakeshore we were able to park the Hideout.

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Dashboard:

Days on the road: 226;

Miles towing the RV: 10,067;

RV parks stayed at: 61;

National parks visited: 21.

The road ahead (Lord willing): Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, and the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia.

BRIMLEY, Mich. – We’ve been traveling along the southeastern shore of Lake Superior, admiring the beautiful sandstone cliffs while learning more about why this stretch is called “The Shipwreck Coast of Lake Superior.”

On Saturday, from the marina in Munising, Mich., we joined a two-hour boat cruise along the beautiful Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The boat’s captain gave a lively description of the shoreline, including how the seepage of minerals give the rocks their distinctive color. The cliffs soar up to 200 feet above the water. In some places the wind, waves, and rain have carved odd shapes, caves, and even archways in the relatively soft rock. We waved to hikers at the top of the cliffs and saw kayakers plying the waters below.

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The next afternoon and evening, I returned on my own to the national lakeshore to enjoy one of the best hikes of our entire trip. The trail loop covered about 10 miles–through the woods, past Mosquito Beach, along the cliffs above the lake, to Chapel Beach, and then back through the woods to the trailhead and parking lot. The weather was ideal—sunny, mid-60s, with a mild breeze off the lake. I have a good tolerance for heights, but there were a few spots along the edge of the cliffs, looking down 150 feet to the pounding surf below, that made me wince!

A highlight of the hike was a swim at Chapel Beach. The waves were three to four feet high, just enough to create excitement without any real danger. And the water was just right. The lake’s water can feel very cold in the middle of the summer, but by September it’s absorbed enough heat to offer a comfortable swim. The only other person on the beach was a middle-aged man named Tim who was camping on his own nearby. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and kids and they are frequent visitors to the area. By mutual agreement, he and his wife occasionally take their own vacations, and Tim chose to hang out for a few days at this wonderful spot. He kindly agreed to take a few photos and a video of me enjoying the surf just so I could share them with all of you!

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On an appropriately windy and rainy day, Elizabeth and I drove an hour up the coast yesterday from our current campground in Brimley to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. The museum is located on a picturesque point separating Whitefish Bay from the main body of the lake. The area has proven dangerous for ships, in part because of the weather but also because it serves as a funnel channeling ships to and from the locks at Sault Ste. Marie that lead to Lake Huron. Many of the shipwrecks described at the museum occurred when ships collided with each other near the point, often at night and in fog.

Exhibits at the museum are very well done. About 10 shipwrecks are highlighted, with each exhibit featuring a description of the disaster, a painting that dramatizes the event, a model of the ship, and in many cases artifacts recovered from the ship’s wreckage hundreds of feet below the waves. The museum also displays two Fresnel lenses, developed in the early 1800s, that allowed lighthouse beams to be seen more than 20 miles from shore.

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Background music for our time on Lake Superior has been Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It’s always been a favorite of mine, and I’ve listened to it a few times as we’ve followed the lake’s shoreline. The museum features a special exhibit on the tragedy and is home to the ship’s 195-pound bell, recovered during a dive to the wreck in 1995. The ship lies 17 miles north of Whitefish Point under more than 500 feet of water. If you want to learn more details of the November 10, 1975, tragedy, here’s the museum’s web page on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and here’s an informative blog post I found annotating the lyrics of Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad. (The song is quite accurate in its details.)

A couple of details about the Edmund Fitzgerald that stuck with me: The captain of the ship, Ernest M. McSorely, had recently turned 63 when the ship met its end, almost exactly my current age. My life seems pretty carefree compared to the responsibilities of a captain of a big ship and crew sailing into freezing rain and 30-foot waves. And minutes before the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, at 7:10 p.m., McSorely had this exchange with the first mate on the freighter Arthur M. Anderson, which was trailing them by about 10 miles.

“By the way, Fitzgerald, how are you making out with your problems?” asked Clark.

McSorely responded: “We are holding our own.”

This was the last radio transmission from the Fitzgerald.

MUNISING, Mich. – We’ve been traveling through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan since Tuesday, hiking through old growth pine woods and viewing the endless expanse and wading in the temperate waters of Lake Superior.

In Copper Harbor, at the top end of the Keweenaw Peninsula, we enjoyed three hikes I would recommend. On our first night there, we drove to the north terminus of US 41 and then along a gravel road to the trailhead for Horseshoe Harbor. The trail led through thick woods to a secluded bay with a rocky ridge along one side. The next day we hiked to Hunter’s Point, along Copper Harbor, with the north segment taking us along the shore of Lake Superior. Strong winds were whipping up waves that one local told us were among the largest he had ever seen. On our last full day, we biked two miles to the Estivant Pines Nature Sanctuary, which preserves an original 600-acre forest of white pines, many more than 100 feet high.

On our last evening in Copper Harbor, we drove along Highway 26 to the town of Eagle Harbor, where we walked the grounds of the lighthouse. Like many lighthouses, it was automated several decades ago. On our agenda that evening was to view the sunset from the top of Brockway Mountain, which lies between the two towns and rises about 700 feet above the lake. Our friend Herb Ford and his family had enjoyed a sunset picnic at the spot on a recent vacation and he highly recommend it. Alas, I miscalculated our timing and we just missed the main event. A friendly fellow saw we had arrived too late and shared his photos of the sunset via iPhone Air Drop.

Yesterday we hauled the RV from Copper Harbor about 180 miles east to our current campsite just outside of Munising, Mich. For the next few nights we’ll be staying at the Silent Night Campground on St. Nicholas Road in Christmas, Mich. (I kid you not!) About 8 miles before our destination, we pulled over to a rest stop along a beautiful stretch of sandy beach. Lake Superior is normally cold, but this time of year its waters are relatively warm from the residual heat of summer. I said to Elizabeth, “I need to go swimming!” With the RV parked close by, I disappeared inside for a few minutes and emerged wearing my swimsuit and water shoes. The water was lovely and clear and the sandy bottom stretched out for a hundred feet from shore. Oh sublime joy!

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Before arriving in the UP, we enjoyed four days in my native state of Wisconsin. During our time in La Crosse County, we visited with my brother, a cousin, and two nephews and their families. I visited the family plot at Hamilton Cemetery outside our hometown of West Salem and placed flowers on my mother’s gravestone. (She passed away in 2017 at age 93.) I also took a bike ride along the Elroy-Sparta Trail that runs through town and rode past the home on Youlon Street where I lived until we moved to Minnesota in 1971.

On the way north to Michigan, we stayed one night in a wooded campground near Rhinelander, Wis. It was a challenge to back the unit into a narrow space, but the reward was a secluded spot surrounded by forest. We built a fire in the pit that evening and shared a s’more.

APPLE VALLEY, Minn. – In our weeklong stay in Minnesota, we’ve visited family and friends while I’ve relived some experiences and places that were significant to me when I lived there during my formative teen years.

In the small town of Sauk Centre, where I graduated from high school in 1976, we walked through the downtown area, and drove past the house where my parents lived for 34 years. Most neighborhoods in the city look much the same, but the town has added a McDonald’s and a Walmart since my high school days. We also walked along the shore of Fairy Lake a few miles north of town, where my family rented a summer cottage during the 1970s and ‘80s, and where I swam and sailed my small boat. (See the photo of me on the boat with my senior-year friend Carlos Medina.)

During our time there, I biked for several miles on the Lake Wobegon Trail, which runs through central Minnesota roughly following Interstate 94. The trail follows an old railroad bed, passing by farms and through groves of birch trees and crossing the Sauk River in several places. While I didn’t reach its fictional namesake, I’ve pieced together from the years I listened to “A Prairie Home Companion” that it lies approximately a dozen miles somewhere southeast from my home town, which has it’s won literary claim to fame as the boyhood home of Main Street author Sinclair Lewis.

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In the Twin Cities area where we are now, we spent a few hours yesterday at the Minnesota State Fair, which must be one of the largest in the nation. In one exhibit hall, called “The Miracle of Birth,” we saw new-born piglets feeding at the teats of a big sow. For some reason this made me think of the appropriations process in the U.S. Congress.

And last night, on a beautiful late summer evening, we watched the Minnesota Twins play the Chicago Cubs at the relatively new Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. The outcome of the game wasn’t as important to me (the Cubs won 3-0) as the experience of rejoining 21,000 fans to root for my favorite team. The Twins and I go back 50 summers now, when I was an awkward 13-year-old who had just moved to a new town in central Minnesota with my parents. Before I got to know my new classmates, I would spend hours listening to the Twins games on the radio. Then in high school I would drive down with friends to see them play at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington. In a corner of the Mall of America, which is built of the site of the old stadium, you can see a brass home plate resting on the same spot where I watched Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew line base hits from my seat in the bleachers back in the mid-1970s.

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From here we’ll travel tomorrow to Wisconsin, and then on to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Lake Superior.

MEDORA, N.D. – Our tour of national parks continued this week with two days of sightseeing and hiking in Theodore Roosevelt N.P. in the badlands of western North Dakota. We saw lovely vistas of the Little Missouri River, lots of buffalo, and a rattlesnake at my feet.

The park is named in honor of the 26^th president, who hunted and owned a cattle ranch in the area in the 1880s. It’s divided into two parts, the South Unit near Medora off Interstate 94, and the North Unit 50 miles up US 85. Both were busy but not crowded, with about a third of the license plates by my informal count from neighboring Minnesota.

On Tuesday we drove most of the Scenic Loop Drive in the South Unit, which was an out-and-back because a section of it was closed for road repairs. The highlight was the Wind Canyon Trail, a short hike to an overlook of the Little Missouri River that flows between the two units. Wind Canyon was full of rocks sculpted into smooth curves by the strong winds that blow through it. We saw a herd of bison grazing along the trail to the Old East Entrance Station.

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On Wednesday, we drove more than an hour to the North Unit and then meandered along the 14-mile Scenic Drive. After touring both units, we agreed with our National Geographic Guide to National Parks that “Many people regard the North Unit as the more attractive of the two major portions of the park.”

Among the features we especially liked in the North Unit was the Cannonball Concretions Pullout, which featured large round rust-colored rocks bulging out of the buttes. Further up the road my dear wife dropped me off at a trailhead for the Caprock Coulee Trail so I could hike a mile and a half along a ridge to meet up with her at the River Bend Overlook. The Oxbow Overlook at the far end of the drive offered a beautiful vista of a bend in the river and the forest of cottonwood trees that thrive along the riverbank. All the views were framed by the eroded buttes of the badlands.

Both units are home to bison and wild horses. Here are shots of the bison we saw.

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We got more excitement than we’d like on the “Little Mo Nature Trail” at the beginning of our time in the North Unit. I was about to turn off the paved main trail onto a side trail when I heard a loud rattle not two feet from my bare legs. I looked down to see a medium-sized rattlesnake with his eyes fixed on me and his forked tongue waving. I said something like, “Whoa!” and quickly backed up. With its rattle having done its work, the snake retreated into the grass. I did stay close enough to capture a video of his back side and the rattler that had spared us both a more unpleasant encounter.

The spirit of US presidents past has been present during our time in the Dakotas. There were the four presidents of Mt. Rushmore, of course, but I also learned that the Black Hills were a favorite retreat of President Calvin Coolidge when he was in office. In fact, he gave a speech in 1927 at a dedication of the beginning of the work on the monument.  At Theodore Roosevelt N.P., we learned that its namesake had first visited here in 1883 and then again in 1884 after he had suffered the twin tragedy of his wife and his mother dying in his house on the same day, February 14, 1884. Roosevelt lived for a time in the Maltese Cross Cabin, which is still preserved with some of his relics on the grounds of the South Unit Visitor Center, seven miles north of where it was originally located.

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On Thursday we drove 230 miles east on I-94 to Jamestown, N.D. From here we’ll be traveling through Minnesota and Wisconsin visiting friends and family in my two home states.

RAPID CITY, S.D. – Elizabeth and I savored the symbolism of Mt. Rushmore on a beautiful Saturday in the Black Hills of South Dakota last week. We admired the artistry of sculptors Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln and learned more about this famous monument. During our time here, I also managed to see Custer State Park and Wind Cave and the Badlands national parks.

Since we last visited Mt. Rushmore 35 years ago, the facilities seemed to us much improved. You can view the monument from a terrace lined with the state flags and get a closer look along the Presidential Trail. As we were gazing at the four faces, I noted thoughtfully to Elizabeth that Jefferson appears to be looking more upward and into the distance than the others, probably the sculptor’s way of conveying his more idealistic vision. But when we were in the Sculptor’s Studio, listening to an excellent presentation by a park ranger, he said that the tilt in Jefferson’s gaze had nothing to do with symbolism but was necessary to work around weakness in the granite that was causing his nose to crack. So much for my artistic interpretation! The guide said some people think the faces look small, but if they were attached to bodies of the same scale, they would be 450 feet tall. That would be three times as high as the Statue of Liberty.

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On another day, I drove the Wildlife Loop Road through Custer State Park and it lived up to its name. During my time in the park I saw four herds of bison, big horn sheep, and a herd of not very wild burros entertaining families by the roadside. At the visitor center I watched an excellent film on the park narrated by Kevin Costner. The film featured amazing footage of the bison being rounded up in an annual fall event. As part of our trip to Mt. Rushmore the next day, Elizabeth and I drove past the beautiful Sylvan Lake in the park and along the Needles Highway, which includes beautiful rock spires and a couple of narrow tunnels carved in the rock that were barely more than eight feet wide.

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Later that day I joined a one-hour tour of a section of the Wind Cave National Park. This is one of the less-well known national parks. The cave system is worth seeing, primarily for the intricate “boxwork” formations that are rare in any other cave system. I must admit I was a bit underwhelmed by the experience, in part because I could only book the least extensive of the three main tours offered and also because we had toured Carlsbad Caverns in April, which are far larger and more spectacular. I also didn’t care for the park’s first-come, first booked system that requires you to show up in person to book a tour for that day. If I had arrived at the park earlier in the morning and had been able to book the longer Fairground Tour or the Natural Entrance Tour, I might have been more effusive in my praise.

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And on another day, while Elizabeth rested at the RV, I drove 75 miles down I-90 to the main entrance to Badlands National Park. We’d also visited this park 35 years ago, but it was even more impressive than I had remembered. The “Badlands Wall” rises up several hundred feet from the southern plains, creating an eerie landscape. Just a few miles south of Exit 131, you can see the stark formations filling the vista. What I really loved, a bit further down the road, was actually hiking the Door Trail along the ridges and out into the Badlands. (If I’d had more time I would have hiked the nearby Notch Trail, which takes you down a ladder into a dry basin.) From there I drove dozens of miles along the Badlands Loop Road, stopping at several overlooks to see the Yellow Mounds and the Pinnacles. I also saw more wildlife along the way, including big horn sheep, bison, and the excitable inhabitants of “Roberts Prairie Dog Town” (captured on the concluding video).

Dashboard:

Days on the road: 196;

Miles towing the RV: 7,780;

RV parks stayed at: 49;

National parks visited: 20.

The road ahead (Lord willing): Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota.