Louisville

My trip to Louisville was busy, although Mater and I were able to get out to eat every day. The photo was taken at Captain's quarters on the river, a favorite restaurant of my parents.

My focus on this trip was the needed repair work on Mater's house, and finding Mater a place to stay while the construction was going on. I met with a couple of contractors, and selected one. I went to see a couple of assisted living places, and selected one, largely on the strength of a room with a view. Both assisted living places were like nice hotels full of old people. ;-)

A pretty successful trip, in that I was able to accomplish what I needed to accomplish.

On my drive to the Indianapolis airport, I was able to stop by the Indiana State museum. One curiosity item was the iron lung, a part of the bad old days of polio.

My flight home was uneventful. Glad to be home.

Sunday - Adrian to Louisville

I went to mass in the morning with Rosemary. I spoke to the two artists who created the tapestry, Barbara Chenicek and Rita Schiltz. It is 7 foot by 17 feet, with 4500 pieces. This was a huge project that took them about three years.

After mass, Rosemary and I said goodbye, and I started the drive south on I75. I decided to stop in Dayton Ohio at the Air Force museum. This is a very large museum, with several hangars, containing aircraft and artifacts from the early days of aviation up to the current day. There was a hangar showing ballistic missles, an interesting exhibit on the Berlin airlift, and even a section devoted to the Holocaust, with emphasis on allied airmen who were put into the camps, along with the Jews. I was able to walk quickly through the entire museum, but walked by most of the information panels without attempting to read them; I could imagine a real airplane or history buff spending days looking at aircraft and exhibits.

In some ways, the most interesting exhibit was the "Bockscar" B29 and the "Fat Boy" nuclear bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki Japan. The side panel explained that "The Japanese army retained sufficient strength to make an invasion extremely costly. Military advisors to president Truman estimated that an invasion of Japan would result in 250,000 to one million American casualties, and an equal number of the enemy. Fortunately for the people of all the nations involved, this inestimable carnage was not necessary. On July 26, 1945, the Allies issued the Potsdam declaration calling for Japan's surrender. Two days later, the Japanese Premier announced to the Japanese press that his government would ignore the ultimatum. Based on this apparent rejection of peace efforts, and the desire to avoid invading Japan, President Truman gave the order to employ a new weapon of mass destruction the atomic bomb." I have read that the exhibit at the Smithsonian does not attempt to explain the rationale or why the US made the decision to drop the bombs on Japan; I have not seen that exhibit.

I arrived in Louisville after dark, and chatted with Mater for a while, mostly discussing the upcoming repairs needed to the house.

Adrian

The Adrian campus is a calm and beautiful place, where everyone is very nice. I just like it here. Rosemary and I met for mass in the morning in their modern chapel. There is a huge tapestry of St. Catherine setting out into the world, made by a couple of nuns, 4500 pieces. I later was able to see a slide show of how it was made, a huge amount of work.

Rosemary and I had lunch, and chatted for a couple of hours. We took a rest break, and then met for dinner, and chatted a couple more hours, on a wide range of topics. She was very upset about the Vatican visitation, which amount to a kind of Papal Investigation of the American nuns. Her order, like most orders, has shrunk dramatically, with the average age in the 70s, and most of the nuns now retired. The Adrian Dominicans are on the liberal end of spectrum, as far as I can tell. Rosemary is not concerned about the number of nuns, thinking that the Holy Spirit is at work, and that organizations have a life cycle.


Rosemary says that she is always glad to see me, that I bring with me a little piece of my father, Eddie, who she was very fond of.

Chicago to Adrian

I checked into the La Quinta hotel in Matteson Thursday night. It was adequate, but I did not sleep too well, as I was wound up from the trip. I got up, ate their continental breakfast, and got on the road.

I had forgotten that the major roads in this area were generally toll roads, and I ended up paying tolls across Indiana and into Ohio.

I made my first stop at the Notre Dame campus, mostly to see the art museum. I had trouble figuring out where I should go, so I finally stopped and asked a young man for directions. He took out his iPhone and pulled up a satellite photo of the campus, and got me oriented.

A beautiful day in South Bend, so a nice walk across campus. The young people seemed cleaner cut than those on the CU campus in Boulder.

The Snite Museum of Art was modest in size, but their collection of Mesoamerican artifacts was quite excellent, including the patterned rollers used to seal documents. Beautiful stuff. The rest of the museum was also good, although I limited myself to the modern art areas.

After a bite in one of the campus fast food restaurants, I got back on the road.

My next stop was the RV museum in South Bend. It was pretty interesting to see the various forms that RVs have taken over the decades, ranging from little tent trailers up to large motor homes. The Shasta trailer in the museum was similar to the one that my grandparents lived in for many years after they retired.

I arrived around dinnertime, so Sister Rosemary and I went to Red Lobster, and then I hit the sack, tired from traveling.

Boulder to Chicago

Marianne dropped me off at the bus stop, and I took the bus to the airport. I arrived in plenty of time, so got my exercise power walking in the Denver airport. On the flight, I sat next to a young man who was in a family business of buying and selling semi-truck tractors. I asked him lots of questions, and learned a lot.

In Indianapolis, I went through their new airport terminal for the first time. Very modern, kind of like the Denver airport, with high ceilings in the main terminal, art hanging down. The Enterprise rent a car people offered to upgrade my car, but it was a little more than I wanted to pay, and then they lowered the amount, so I took the upgrade. The car is a Hundai Sonata, pretty nice, almost full sized. I enjoyed the XM Satellite radio as I drove up to Chicago.

I arrived at Ann and Rosemary's townhouse around 7 PM. Rosemary had just started a new job, and was so happy to be out of her previous situation. Ann seemed shorter and more bent over than I remembered, but looked pretty good for 94 years old! We talked on a range of issues, especially related to the church. I left after Ann started to nod off a bit. They were very happy to see me, and I them. It had been a few years.

Puerto Vallarta and home

We slept in on Friday, then Richard went to the beach and went kayaking, while Marianne and Eileen went shopping, partly to use up a credit from the previous shopping trip.

After lunch, Richard and Eileen headed for the old part of Puerto Vallarta, including the Rio Cuale. Eileen bought some day of the dead skeleton monks as gifts.

Our last dinner in Puerto Vallarta was at Victors, where everyone greeted our return, and the same musicians performed a couple of songs for us. A nice way to finish the trip.

Saturday morning we ate breakfast, packed, and headed for the airport to turn in the rental car. We said goodby to Eileen at the airport, and flew to Houston. After going through immigrations and customs, we caught a flight back to Denver. There was some snow around the car in the airport parking lot, but we had missed the huge snowstorm that occurred in Colorado while we were gone.

Rest day and visit to Talpa

Wedneday we all agreed to take a rest day in and around the condo, with Thursday the long trip to Talpa.

Eileen and Marianne went to the nearby shopping center, Eileen had her hair cut, Marianne bought a dress.

In the evening, we went to the membership party for the condo association, and then we went back to Arrayans for another good meal.

Thursday we got up early and hit the road around 7AM. It took a while to get out of the outskirts of Puerto Vallarta, but we eventually got out into the country. The road through the mountains was very twisty. We stopped at Mascota in the market for breakfast. Mascota is a sleepy valley town with cobblestone streets, perhaps best known for being the birthplace of St. Jose Maria Robles Hurtado. St. Hurtado was a priest executed during the Christero wars; he was canonized recently along with several other Mexican saints from the same era. The exvoto below is someone giving thanks to St. Hurtado for returning safely to his family, probably from the USA.

We pressed on to Talpa, going over a short but steep mountain pass. Talpa is another sleepy town with cobblestone streets. On the road into town there were statues of various apparations of the virgin, including Lourdes and Fatima. The church was not as remarkable as we had hoped; there were few exvotos in view.

We then went up to the house of Jenny and Howard M. Richard knew Jenny through her writings. She used to be a consular agent in Puerto Vallarta. She knew all about Fernando, the developer of the condo we are staying at. They were very hospitable, and we chatted for quite some time. Their home overlooks the town.

Back in the car, over the short pass outside Talpa, through the valley, and then back over the long and twisty mountain pass. We were keeping an eye on the clock, as we wanted to be back to Puerto Vallarta before dark. We decided to make a dinner stop in San Sebastian, a very pretty old mining town. Our dinner at El Fortin was not that great.

We headed back, and arrived on the edge of Puerto Vallarta around dark. It took a long time to get through rush hour traffic to our condo. A very long day, we were all tired.