Family Vacay VIII: Day 4--from Marion, IL to Owensboro, KY

Last year on our summer vacation, we visited Anson, Texas, where my great-grandfather, Gilbert Nathaniel "N.G." Ferrell was elected sheriff in 1908 at the age of 48, three years after his seventh child, my grandmother, Ida Ferrell was born. N.G. died in Anson in 1939.

This year, we are visiting Williamson County, Illinois, where N. G. and his wife, Sadie, were themselves born (Ferrell on February 20, 1860, and Sadie in 1868).

N.G.'s grandfather William Ferrell, his grandmother Susannah Jaily Barnes, and their son Ezra--my grandmother's grandfather--moved to Williamson County in 1839.
  William was born in Fairfax, Virginia. By the time he was 22, he lived with his family 300 miles to the south in Wake County (county seat: Raleigh) in North Carolina. There, he married Jaily Susannah Barnes.

In 1813 William enlisted in Colonel John Coffey's regiment in Andrew Jackson's army and fought Creeks who were seeking to recover some of their ancestral lands.

After Jackson's army demolished the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, Jackson forced the Creeks to surrender half of Alabama and part of Southern Georgia. William later fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.

By 1860, William was a 71-year-old farmer and miner, living alone with his wife Jailie in Williamson County. In the summer of 1865, he helped organize the Marion Baptist Church, which he served as an elder. He died two years later, in 1867, which his grandson N.G. was 7 years old.

I've included a fuller account of what I've learned about Ezra and William in a separate post at emiliosdad.blogspot.com.

After we left the Ferrell Cemetery in Williamson County, we headed to the Athenaum in New Harmony, Indiana, where Welsh textile manufacturer Robert Owen invested his fortune in an effort to build a model community based on rational thinking, cooperation, and free education on the banks of the Wabash River in 1825.
Pablo's vision for Utopia: "A harmonious society where resources are split evenly: food - power - houses - e..."[?].


At the Athenaum, we rented a golf cart for an hour. Though it was expensive, I consider it to be one of the best decisions we made on the trip. We could have easily walked to all of the destinations we visited, but it was more fun to take the cart (even though Emilio fell out at one point).


Featured stop: Philip Johnson's open-air, non-denominational "Roofless Church," built in 1960, was commissioned by a descendent of Robert Owen to honor the inspiration provided by vision for New Harmony. The Church occupies a city block. Johnson believed that only one roof—the sky—could encompass all worshipping humanity.

The parabolic dome at one end of the Church was built in the form of an inverted rosebud, tying it to the New Harmony Community of Equals, whose symbol was the rose.
Under the dome: Jacques Lipchitz's sculpture "Descent of the Holy Spirit."







According to Encyclopedia Britannica, New Harmony failed to meet Owen's expectations because most of the 1,000 people Owen recruited to populate the community "were misfits who ate his rations, argued over government, and were unable to perform the menial tasks vital to such a community." As a consequence, "Farms and workshops lay idle."


When Owen abandoned New Harmony in 1828, five of his eight children decided to stay on, along with some of the scientists and teachers Owen had recruited. According to Britannica, they developed "one of the most notable pre-Civil War cultural centres in the United States."


The Harmony Way Bridge (built in 1830) across the Wabash between Illinois and Indiana has been closed since 2012, but this welcome sign still awaits visitors from Illinois..

We are a family that digs labyrinths, and New Harmony has two of them: one is granite; the other is shrubbery-based.. This shrubbery labyrinth in "was originally designed as a place for meditation and reflection by the Rappites, an ultra-religious German society, in the early 19th century." A "vow of celibacy ultimately ended the community’s hope for survival." That's a Rappite temple in the middle of the labyrinth.


Not visible in these photographs: the swarms of gnats that protect the labyrinth from pilgrims who are less than patient. Their presence is somewhat detectable in the facial expressions of the Ruiz Benton labyrinthers.



After we left New Harmony, we had dinner at Arazu on Main in Evansville, Indiana.
We didn't know what the kids would like, so we ordered too much food. And then we ate almost all of it.


This table is covered with winning dishes.  My favorites:  the artichoke dip, the bruschetta, the flatbread, and the potatoes.


Hello, Kentucky!

Day Two: From Carlsbad to Tucson

After our first day on the road, we slept in sleeping bags in a tent on a dirt parking lot/KOA campground. I don't regret it, though. The KOA facilities game is strong, and the price is right. At 3:30 in the morning, it suddenly got very windy, and when Mari looked out the window she saw a neighbor's tent flying off into the night. We don't think their were any human beings inside. That innocent looking tree behind our tent was actually an alarm clock factory, where a full staff of hard-working fine-feathered employees were up early trying out various human-wake-up sounds. Almost all of them worked quite well.


From the KOA Campground, we headed to Carlsbad Caverns, which I had last visited more than 40 years ago. Because Nina and Pablo are 4th graders, we didn't have to pay to get in. Woo hoo!


Carlsbad Caverns was impressive then, but I've seen a lot since then and wasn't sure it would live up to my memory of it.


The Caverns did not disappoint. The long walk-in into the hole with singing cave swallows flying above was a highlight. The other large caverns I've been in (Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Jewel Cave in South Dakota, and Blanchard Springs Caverns in Arkansas) are accessed via elevator, which is not as dramatic.


I have never seen a photo that captures the magnificent vastness of a large cavern, so I didn't even try to take any photos like that.

After a long day on the road, crossing the Chihuahua Desert, we had a tasty dinner at Pita Jungle in Tucson.

Day 4 Afternoon: The Badlands

After leaving Niobrara, we reached the Badlands National Park in South Dakota in the afternoon and promptly set off on three of its trails. We were promptly greeted by a desert rabbit. Some of our songs for the road included "Drums" sung by South Dakota Sioux native Floyd Red Crow Westerman.

He survived this jump unscathed.