LH Travels Illinois-Indiana

Heading East Through Indiana--On & Off the Lincoln Highway

After a brief stay in Chicago we head out toward Indiana and Ohio. When the national highway numbering system was implemented in 1926, a large portion of the Lincoln Highway became US 30. But the actual Lincoln Highway snakes on and off US 30, and just past Valparaiso University it breaks off altogether with the original 1913 route heading up toward South Bend and the 1920's version headed toward Fort Wayne. Eventually the two routes converge again in Fort Wayne. For this trip, my group decided to take the 1920's route toward Fort Wayne.

We joined the Lincoln Highway just east of Merrillvile, not far from the famous "Ideal Mile" section of the Lincoln Highway between Schereville and Dyer.These "seeding mile" projects were intended to demonstrate what a modern road could be. Earlier ones, like the one farther west near DeKalb, demonstrated the advantages of concrete vs ruts-in-the-dirt (which was the majority of the Lincoln Highway in 1914). The "Ideal Mile" section ending in Dyer was built in 1923. By this time the funding was firmly in the Feds hands--but the Lincoln Highway Association with Fisher at the lead had shown the way. The 1923 version featured improvements like:

• 40 ft wide concrete pavement 10 inches thick
• Minimum radius for curves of 1000 feet, with guardrails at all embankments
• Curves superelevated (banked) for a speed of 35 miles per hour

All the innovations that made it possible, 91 years later, for our rented Chevy Impala to zip along the highway, GPS connected and air conditioning humming.Merrillville to Valparaiso

Remember the Tim Burton version of Willi Wonka starring Johnny Depp? My family watched a snippet of that movie on tv before heading out of Chicago for our Lincoln Highway journey east. Just outside of Merrillville, IN we arrived at the Albanese Candy Factory, and short of the Wonka trademark, it seemed like we had arrived right back in the movie. You walk into an explosion of candy and color. Albanese is the largest manufactuerer of gummy bears in the mid-west. Back behind all the bins of candy, 16 flavors of gummy bears, bins of chocolates, licorice, all kinds of nuts, is a raised walkway with eight windows that peer into the factory

Remember Willie's father losing his job to the one-armed robot that did a superior job of putting the lid on the toothpaste tube? Those robots are here as well, putting gummys into boxes. Fortunately there were also plenty of white coated and hair-netted folks in evidence, but no Umpa Lumpas that I could see.I love gummy bears. When they are fresh they are superior to swedish fish, swedish worms and all that other junk. I bought several bags of gummies--Rasberry, black cherry, peach, pineapple, grapefruit, watermelon. and mango.

My family bought so much candy, not only gummy bears but all kinds of chocolates, that we realized we had a problem. It was July--the stuff was going to melt. So we hustled over to Target and bought a small cooler to store the goodies for the next few . Great ideaGummy bears were invented by a poor german confectionary worker, slaving away at a dead end job, who opened his own place and hit upon the idea of a gelatin based treat in the shape of the popular european dancing bears (a connection to John Irving fans everywhere).

Road to Valparaiso

Back on the Lincoln Highway we followed the original 1913 Route to Valparaiso. In addition to being the home of Valparaiso University, I also discovered that Valparaiso is a terminal moraine. Apparently a terminal moraine is an accumulation of soil and rock debris that forms at the snout of a glacier, marking its maximum advance. An interesting fact, given all the global warming discussions.

On the western edge of Valparaiso we made a detour off the Lincoln Highway. We wound our way through some upscale neighborhoods and found our way to Taltree Arboretum and Gardens. The center piece of this beautiful 360 acre garden is a unique railway garden. Amidst the miniature conifers is the 1:24" scale railroad world featuring 10 trains and dozens of miniature tableaus including Lincoln's funeral train (passing thorough Indiana in 1865), a West Virginia coal mine (circa 1916), a 1863 Tennessee Hills Civil War scene, and a southern Indiana Limestone quarry (circa 1910). Designed by a architect, the detail is amazing. I was fascinated by a workman's train, straight out of the Hell on Wheels tv show, a tall traveling bunkhouse structure that had to be tied down to keep from blowing away.

Dave Besterman is a train enthusiast who has been volunteering every Wednesday at the gardens since his retirement. Biggest challenge in an outdoor railway garden is the weather. If the storm moves quick enough, they don't always have time to drive all ten engines into the side rail that goes down into the basement of the welcome center. Sometimes leading in and putting cardboard boxes over the trains is all they can do. Sometimes leaping in and putting cardboard boxes over the trains is all they can do. Occasionally the trains go into the tunnels, but never come out

This is usually caused by chipmunks burrowing into the tunnels. The part that irritates Dave the most is the parents who get mad when he has to ask a kid not to touch a train. The parents might be less irritated if they knew that the display also contains several snakes, probably attracted by the chipmunks.

After visiting the railway garden we went across the parking lot to explore the Heron garden. However it was covered in algae and mosquitos seem to be emerging, so we cut that excursion short and headed back to the car.

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