by Papi | Oct 3, 2025 | Toledo, OH, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Toledo, Ohio is home to the National Museum of the Great Lakes. The museum has a fine collection of exhibits related to the Great Lakes and, of course, the major economic activity of shipping on the lakes. In addition, two museum ships...
by Papi | Oct 1, 2025 | Bay City, MI, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Nowadays, just a bit up the Saginaw River off of Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron in Bay City, Michigan resides the “Grey Ghost of the Vietnamese Coast”. The USS Edson (DD-946) is a Forrest Sherman class destroyer of Vietnam War vintage. The...
by Papi | Sep 26, 2025 | Saint Ignace, MI, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Have traversed the great state of Michigan to do a bit of wandering in the Upper Peninsula. This is where lumberjacks and redcoats can be found. Don’t need to go to Canada for the former nor Great Britian for the latter. Also, visited a...
by Papi | Sep 24, 2025 | Muskegon, MI, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Agreed. Not the catchiest title. Sometimes just cannot find that well of creativity. However, there are three vessels and they all reside in roughly the same neighborhood – Muskegon, Michigan on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan....
by Papi | Sep 22, 2025 | Chicago, IL, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Those dogs would be my feet. They do have a point. They were under the impression that this series of On the Flip Side would be an extended road trip featuring a lot of driving with only reasonable amounts of walking. Well Chicago is like...
by Papi | Sep 10, 2025 | Manitowoc, WI, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, One of the challenges associated with museum ships is that there are times when they are unavailable due to maintenance and in fact may not even be at their usual location. If they still reside on the water (which most do) then at times...
by Papi | Sep 7, 2025 | Baraboo, WI, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Actually, the circus is always in town in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The town is the home of Circus World, part of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Circus World preserves and exhibits artifacts, like posters and wagons, as well as structures...
by Papi | Sep 4, 2025 | Duluth, MN, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Watch the video to the right to see a 65 year old kid. I imagine that for anyone, getting to toot a ship’s horn puts one in touch with one’s inner child. Did for me! More on the ship, SS Meteor, later in this post. This post in general...
by Papi | Aug 27, 2025 | Bloomington, MN, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, Yes. I admit it. I did it. Not sure why. Probably a case of it was there so I had to do it. That would be the Mall of America. Reputedly the largest mall in America. And that would put me in Bloomington, Minnesota, part of the metro area...
by Papi | Aug 24, 2025 | Des Moines, IA, USA
Greetings Family and Friends, A new state, that would be Iowa, and a new capital city, that would be Des Moines. But on the drive in from Omaha, a stop at the birthplace of the Duke, aka John Wayne, that would be Winterset, Iowa. The town lies southwest of Des Moines...
