When I looked at the Calendar this morning, I noticed that today is one of those "obscure fact" holidays noted on today's date, August 26:
Woman Suffrage 1920
So I went online to Wikipedia to check out the details of why it was noted on my calendar today. I learned that woman suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels during the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided:
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
Even though the House of Representatives voted on May 21, 1919 to pass this law and the Senate voted to pass it on June 4, 1919, it still needed 36 of the State legislatures to ratify it before it would officially be the law throughout the United States. Well many of the States came on board very quickly and Tennessee was the 36th State to ratify it on August 18, 1920.
It is amazing that it was many years later before some States ratified the 19th Amendment! Here are some of the last States to "get on board":
Maryland-1941
Virginia-1952
Alabama-1953
Florida & South Carolina-1969
Georgia & Louisiana-1971
Mississippi did not ratify the 19th Amendment until 1984, sixty four years after the law was enacted nationally!
Oh my, how blessed and fortunate we are that so many forward-thinking women came before us and here in 2013 we are able to enjoy so many freedoms! Not only can I go out and vote now, I can safely don a backpack and go for a 2,181 mile "walk in the woods"! How lucky I am! Here are just a couple of the fearless women I met while "walking in the woods":
This is "Country Mouse" (who is a pilot) and her husband "Shadow".
--and this is "Thimbleberry" w/Adalena attached to her pack strap!
--
and this is friends, "Pigeon" & "Thimbleberry", helping each other over the rough spots!
--
and "Pigeon" at a beautiful Maine pond.
And these are some of my wonderful Saddlebag women friends:
I've been a part of the Saddlebags since 1985, so I guess you could say we are all growing old together!
The most important, and the most loved, respected, and appreciated woman in my life is my Mom! As you may remember from one of my previous posts, my Mom had her 87th birthday earlier this year and celebrated that day by going out and mowing her lawn and running her riding lawn mower up a tree thereby tipping it up on end and she ended up on the ground, thankfully uninjured! Trust me, that did not slow her down one bit! She is currently planning to go with my sister, Norma, on a very long driving vacation visiting many places along the way, including several National Parks out west and many other scenic spots. I admire her adventuresome spirit and her desire to keep traveling and staying as active as she possibly can. What a woman!
Here is my Mom "giving her two cents worth" as they pore over maps while planning this long trip. Mom and Norma are involved in a Christian R.V. Camping Group called the Texas Peacemakers and several others from this group are going along on this trip thru the western United States.
Me with the adventuresome travelers: Mom & Norma
We are in the "dog days of Summer" now. Get outside early and do all those outdoor chores and then try to stay cool in the afternoon! My friend Mary Ann and I went walking at 7:00 a.m. for an hour and a half this morning. It felt good to get back into our walking routine after a couple of months of not walking together. I have begun to ride my bike almost every day, "around the block", which is about 4 1/2 miles, just enough to get my heart rate up for awhile.
My Sweetie, Tom, celebrated his birthday recently and since he is now taking such good care of himself, he also practiced "portion control" on his birthday!
He would only eat a tiny wedge out of this tiny cake! (I had to eat all the rest!)
I really enjoyed seeing all the beautiful flowers while on vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan!
I don't know what these are, but they were growing along Hwy.58, just past the Log Slide area.
Here are wild flowers growing along the beach near the Manistique Lighthouse.
When we stopped at a rest area on Hwy.2, we saw these wildflowers:
Mackinac Island probably had more flower beds that anywhere else we visited, from window boxes, to borders, to giant planted beds! We also spotted a few wild flowers as we rode our bikes around the Island.
BooBoo admiring the day lilies growing at the Battlefield on Mackinac Island:
And the boat load of flowers at a pull-out on Hwy. 134, along the way to Drummond Island.
How could we forget about our gravel road adventure on Drummond Island and the field of wildflowers we saw:
Then when we got to Greenstone and Thimbleberry's home, we saw all their beautifully manicured flower beds:
On our walk in the woods behind their home were these wildflowers:
These photos were taken at the Mission Hills Cemetery:
We finally spotted some thimbleberry plants that were growing along the path in the Fayette Historical State Park:
-----and when we got back home, it was nice to see our plants on our deck were still thriving:
---and as usual this red salvia is "popping up everywhere"!
No place like home!!!
Day 8, Sunday, July 28, is a traveling day for us. We fly from Marquette to Detroit, change planes; fly to Minneapolis/St. Paul, have a two-hour layover, change planes; fly direct to DFW/Dallas!
It is 50 degrees and misting rain this morning when we awoke at 4:45 a.m. Drove the 15 miles out to the Airport, turned in our Rental Car keys/paperwork in a night drop slot, ended up having to check my small carry-on bag because of the 10 oz. jar of thimbleberry jelly I bought yesterday as a souvenir! Homeland Security would not let me carry it onto the plane! Let's see, we paid $17 for the jelly and $25 for the checked bag! That's some expensive jelly, but I mainly wanted it for the jar/label! Oh well, it's only vacation money!
When we arrived in Detroit, to get to our next plane to Minneapolis/ St. Paul, we had to go back thru that tunnel that goes under the runways. This time we were not having to run like we did last Sunday on our way to Marquette, so I was able to snap some photos of the changing lights in the long tunnel. There is very soothing music and sounds as the lights change colors.
It's kind of surreal as we walk along thru the tunnel that connects incoming and outgoing terminals.
We make it safely to Minneapolis/St. Paul and have plenty of time to walk around and find us something for lunch. I seldom see my name (spelled with an "E") anywhere we travel, however here it is in the Airport!
Uneventful flight on the last leg of our journey home today. My friends Mary Ann, Tony, and Ellie came back to DFW today to give us a ride home. We stopped in Terrell at Dos Aces Mexican Restaurant for some good Mexican food, something we missed this past week.
When we left home last week, our garden was looking pretty "tired", and our local weather forecast was calling for hot and dry days ahead, so we just figured the garden would be all shriveled up and dead when we got home. Well it rained while we were away and the garden has come back to life (somewhat)!
As you can see we picked some "monster squash"! There are more piled up on the other end as well! So we are sharing most of what we are picking. We have two rows of purple-hull peas that just stared producing peas about the time we got back from vacation, so we are shelling and freezing those.
Our crabapple tree was loaded with fruit when we came home!
A couple of days after we got home, Tom's brother Mark, and wife Janie came to see us! Janie went out and picked up a bag full of those crabapples to make jelly! We enjoyed having Mark and Janie come for a visit! They brought along their new puppy, "Queenie".
We always enjoy going away on vacations, but no matter where we go, or how much we see, or how much we do, there is no place in the whole wide world quite like "home"! We viewed this spectacular sunset right from our own deck the day after we came home!
Following our tour of Fayette Historical State Park, we visited the Park Store for an ice cream cone (and I found me a new windbreaker there!), then we went down the road a ways to a small local café and enjoyed lunch.
We traveled with Greenstone and Thimbleberry northward to Garden Corners where we had parked our vehicle earlier. Somehow a beautiful butterfly managed to hitch a ride with us inside the car and landed right on my hand! After taking its photo, I rolled down the car window and let it fly away.
Sadly, we said goodbye to G. & T. when we got back to our car, since they were heading back to their Camp Host duties at Colwell Lake Campground, and we would be heading northwest toward Marquette, to fly home tomorrow. We have really, really enjoyed our time together this week with Greenstone and Thimbleberry and they have been such gracious hosts opening their home to us and making us feel so welcome! Thank you so much to my dear A.T. friends for our memorable time in the U.P.!
We traveled west on U.S.Hwy 2 thru Isabella, Nahma Junction, Ensign, and Rapid River. Then went thru Gladstone (which is a suburb of Escanaba, Mi.), where we picked up Hwy. 35 north, passing thru Brampton, Rock, Lathrop, and McFarland. Passed by this neat old barn along the way!
We chose to go thru the model town of Gwinn, Mi. before traveling the wiggly, squiggly road thru the forested hills southwest of Marquette. Gwinn was such a pretty little town with a nice big park and landscaped boulevard!
The road between Gwinn and Palmer wound up and down thru steep hills and valleys and thickly forested with cooler temps. A fun and pretty drive!
We arrived at our hotel, the Holiday Inn in Marquette, and were surprised to have greeters at the front doors welcoming us to the hotel! It seems the owner of the hotel is hosting his 40th Class Reunion with more than a hundred guests in town for that, so the extra service from his employees is to "impress" his high school classmates. The gals dressed in black who welcomed us when we drove up said "Don't expect this extra service tomorrow night!"
The Holiday Inn has a huge indoor heated pool and a large hot tub and a sauna. It was a nice way to relax at the end of a day "on the road". We enjoyed dinner in the hotel restaurant, fried cod fish, while looking out the floor to ceiling plate glass windows that lined the back wall next to our table. It was fun to watch a photographer set up for a group photo-op on the back lawn of all the 40th Reunion participants.
Tomorrow we get up early for a 6:20 a.m. flight home!
