Tag: History

Seattle Subculture Tour

Our first day in Seattle today and we managed to cram a lot in (and I’m not just talking about the complimentary breakfast).

This morning started with a trip to the Seattle Center , a park and arts centre built for the 1962 “Century 21 Exposition”, which is home to the Space Needle (which we have’t been up yet, we’re saving it).

It’s also home to the EMP, “Experience Music Project” which, strangely, is both a music museum and a science fiction museum in one. The music section is home to exhibits about Seattle’s most famous exports (except maybe Microsoft), Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix and the science fiction museum is currently holding an interactive exhibit about Avatar. Strange combination but it kind of worked. The music lab also contained a lot of interactive exhibits and mini recording studios. I tried to teach Jen how to play the guitar but it wasn’t really working, not least because I don’t really know how to play the guitar.

Anyway, we then walked down to Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market , an indoor and outdoor farmers market since 1907. Alongside the fish and flower markets there’s an awful lot of tourist tat shops. It was interesting but we didn’t stay long.

In the afternoon we’d booked ourself onto the “Seattle Subculture Tour” , a bus tour taking in all the important “alternative” sites in Seattle. It was a really fun tour, although it wasn’t exactly on brief. It was pretty much a standard tour of the main sights in Seattle but there were only 4 of us booked on the bus so we pretty much got a personal tour with the guide. The tour stopped at Kurt Cobain’s house as well as “Kurt’s Bench” which has become a shrine to him over the years. We also got to hop off the bus and get some great views of Lake Washington, Bill Gate’s house (from a long way away!), Chinatown and Mount Ranier , which dominates the skyline wherever you are in Seattle, but looks great over the lake.

By the way, for any fans of Soundgarden out there, the monument Jen is leaning against in the photo is called the “Black Hole Sun”, which has a fairly famous song named after it .

 

 

Buffalo Bill Museum and Cody Stampede Rodeo

Thanks to our quick sprint from Chicago we had an extra day in Cody, Wyoming today, named after William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody . We’re in the heart of cowboy country and today couldn’t have been more “yeee-haawww” if we’d tried.

We started out at the Old Trail Town , a re-creation frontier town in Cody which has been recreated from historic buildings and artifacts, dismantled, transported from their original locations and painstakingly rebuilt here. Really impressive.

Next we moved onto the Buffalo Bill Historic Centre which was a huge museum (actually 5 museums in 1), considering the small town it’s in. We had time to check out the Buffalo Bill exhibition and the Yellowstone exhibition. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see the American Indian, Western Art or “Firearms” exhibitions because we had to get to dinner.

For dinner we’d checked ourselves into a “Chuck Wagon” dinner with a live show . A “Chuck Wagon” dinner seems to be another excuse for Americans to serve you as much meat as you can possibly eat, basically a self-service, all you can eat indoor barbecue where you can “add steak for $6” (classy!) We were treated to an hour of country and western music while we duly ate as much as we could.

The day finished with at the Cody Nite Rodeo . I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect but it was great. There were some genuinely impressive moments, including some scary looking bull riding, cattle roping and some incredible gymnastics (they may look like they’re falling off in the photos but they’re not).

Tomorrow we continue to Yellowstone.

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorials

Our plan was to drive from Chicago to Yellowstone over 4 days, staying in Fairmont, Rapid City, Buffalo and then Cody on the way. Once we got on the road though, we realised that they were a lot more empty than we thought and that we may as well drive into the night to get to Yellowstone faster.

So, we drove 900 miles on Thursday (14 hours!) and made it all the way to Rapid City on the first night, then nearly 500 miles yesterday via Mount Rushmore straight to Cody, which means we get an extra night in Cody and an extra night in Yellowstone!

Anyway, just outside Radid City we stopped at Mount Rushmore , which was fairly impressive and makes for some good cheesy photos.

Much more interesting however was the Crazy Horse Memorial being built 20 miles down the road in the middle of Black Hills National Forest . It was commissioned in 1948 by the Lakota Indians to serve as a permanent memorial to Crazy Horse . It was originally being sculpted by one man, Korczak Ziółkowski , until he died in 1982 and his sons and daughters took over. It’s a long way from being finished, they’ve only made it as far as his face and arm so far but it’ll get there eventually.

Whilst Mount Rushmore is a government funded memorial, built quickly as a tourist attraction to bring people to South Dakota, the Crazy Horse memorial is a labour of love, which has real meaning for the tribes still living in Black Hills. It’s also going to be 6 times as big as Mount Rushmore.

We then had an incredible trip to Cody, right through the middle of Bighorn National Forest (scene of the Battle of Little Bighorn), driving straight across part of the Rocky Mountain Range . I’ve tried to capture some of the landscapes as we drove up the steep mountain path overlooking the prairies but somehow it doesn’t really translate in 2D. I’ll try to do better in Yellowstone.

Motown Museum, Detroit

Detroit is famous for 2 things; cars and music.

Detroit = The Motor City = Motown

From the window of our hotel we could see the Ford building and the Ford test track below. We were also just a few minutes from the Henry T Ford Museum, but we only had one morning and I’d put Detroit on the itinerary for one reason only and that was to visit the Motown Museum.

The Motown Museum is no ordinary museum, full of glass cabinets and exhibits (althouth there are some). The Museum is built inside the small residential property which housed Tamla Motown records during their busiest years and was mostly set out just like it was in the 60’s and 70’s.

Berry Gordy bought the property in 1959 and it was both his home, a recording studio, headquarters, distribution hub and artist development centre. We got to stand (and sing, badly) in the original Studio A where artists like Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, The Temptations, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson (the list goes on…) recorded their biggest hits. We also got to see how Motown really was a small cottage industry, run from a small property where everybody chipped in (the artists would pack boxes when they weren’t recording and Diana Ross sat on the front desk answering the phones when she first got there).

I think my favourite story from our (excellent) tour guide was about the candy machine in the lobby. Apparently the Baby Ruth bars were always kept in the 4th slot from the right hand side and whoever filled it was told they MUST make sure the Baby Ruth bars were 4th from the right. This was because Baby Ruth bars were Stevie Wonder’s favourite and he could only find them by hitting the 4th button from the right 🙂

Unfortunately, no photos are allowed in the museum but you get a sense of how small it is from the few photos I got of the outside.

 

 

Boston Freedom Trail

I just wanted to post a few photos from today. We spent 3 hours learning about the history of Boston and US independence on the Boston Freedom Trail .

The photos won’t mean much to anyone who hasn’t been on the tour or read the history but it was a really interesting day learning about key figures in the revolution like Paul Revere and Samuel Adams , seeing sights like the USS Constitution and the Old South Meeting House and hearing about events such as the Boston Tea Party , Boston Massacre and the Battle of Bunker Hill .

We’re a little tired after doing 2.5 mile walking tour in the middle of a heatwave but it was great fun.