Road Trip! Harold "Pie" Keller Memorial, Herbert Hoover (Part 2), and Indiana Dunes National Park!
I hit double nickels this year and got tickets to the Michigan game at Nebraska for my birthday, so my daughter Lacey and I drove out there - which makes 44 states now for me having never been to Nebraska before now.
We got the win in Lincoln and were extremely impressed with both cities of Omaha and Lincoln. Plenty to do and everyone was friendly and welcoming to Michigan fans.
On the way back we hit some history - of course. Let’s get to it:
Road Trip! Harold “Pie” Keller Memorial, Herbert Hoover, and Indiana Dunes
Brooklyn, Iowa and Harold “Pie” Keller
I haven’t covered a ton of World War II history on this blog since often it’s my travels that dictate what I post about, but as we were driving down I-80 in Iowa we saw a sign for the Harold “Pie” Keller Memorial and I had Lacey Google it.
Wow.
Keller was one of the Marines who raised the flag in the iconic photo on top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima and no one really knew it until 2019. He didn’t really talk about it. But when the Marines did indeed confirm that he was in that photo, his hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa raised enough money to build a memorial, and there was no way I wasn’t stopping to see it. It’s really nice. I get sidetracked with my various projects and I’m not as disciplined as I should be in my reading, but as I work my way through American history chronologically I still plan on reading a full account of that battle. The photos below are pretty self-explanatory, and I included a photo of the State of Michigan flag (Go Blue!), a photo of the quaint little town of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Historical Museum which is housed in an 1869 home built by William Mannatt which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
John Wayne also lived in Brooklyn for a time as a child, and I debated including this here because I do NOT feel he was a good person based on some horrible things he said… it was a couple blocks away so we took a look out of curiosity.
Herbert Hoover - Part 2
We visited the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site on our 2 week western roadtrip a couple years ago and were really impressed. But when we were there the gravesite was under construction and the park is RIGHT off the highway, so we stopped again. We got a little more than we bargained for - not only is the gravesite really beautiful, but there is a Tallgrass Prairie that we didn’t visit last time. The Tallgrass Prairie was replanted with native tallgrass to recreate the natural landscape the way it was in Hoover’s youth and it’s really cool.
Indiana Dunes National Park
Since I caught the National Park bug I’ve been trying to see as many as I can. I’ve driven past the Indiana Dunes many times, but never stopped, and it’s only been a National Park for 6 years. It’s kind of a borderline-worthy National Park, but that still makes it pretty cool even if it’s not Bryce Canyon. We didn’t see a large portion of the park overall but we walked the Dune Succession Trail which is a mile long and really nice. The beach is beautiful and you can see a tiny Chicago skyline across Lake Michigan in the distance. We learned about Alice Mabel Grey—known as “Diana of the Dunes,” who was an activist who lived in and around the dunes over a century ago, and we barely made it out of there before the skies opened up… It was worth the stop!
A word About Nebraska
Nebraska was actually the destination for this trip as I mentioned at the beginning, and the history was what we hit along the way. We kinda fell in love with Omaha a little. We hit a great book store, an amazing candy store and there was good food and good energy overall. We just thought it was such a cool city, and our Air BnB hosts were delightful as was pretty much every single person we met in Nebraska. Lincoln is also a really cool city and home of the friendliest and most welcoming group of fans I’ve ever encountered at an away game. Every 2 minutes people would stop us to thank us for coming to Lincoln and to welcome us. The Nebraska-Lincoln campus is beautiful and we were able to take in not only the football game, but a couple of museums including the fantastic Sheldon Art Museum as well as the volleyball match that night. Nebraska is volleyball mecca and my former teammate and friend Vada Murray’s (may he rest in peace) daughter Harper stars for the Huskers. So that was a real treat.
I hope you enjoyed the highlights of this trip!
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M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here. You can also visit our other business Detroit Jerky at the website www.DetroitJerkyLLC.com! Also please visit my other media company Hail Media for all kinds of Michigan content - podcasts and shows about the Wolverines!