Spent most of the day in Wheeling, WV, which is a lot more interesting than you think. The sights we saw were the suspension bridge (the most important pre-Civil War bridge still standing, we were informed many times), which extended the National Road out of West Virginia and into Ohio, and the old Custom House, which is now a museum, but which, in its long history, was the site of the meetings which resulted in the formation of West Virginia as a new state.

The bridge is 1010 feet long (measured from tower to tower) and was built in 1848, a mere 30 years after the National Road made it to Wheeling . (The National Road was the first federally sponsored highway. It ran from Baltimore to somewhere near Vidalia, IL, where it petered out due to competition from railroads. It was eventually reincarnated as US40, however, and is a coast-to-coast highway.) Unfortunately, the bridge collapsed in massive storms in 1854. Undaunted, Wheeling called the original engineer to come and fix it (sounds like totally rebuild), and it re-opened in four months. Still gets steady traffic today, including us. We crossed it both ways twice--once on foot and once in the car. See many appended photos.

Interesting story about the bridge: the city of Pittsburgh sued Wheeling over the bridge, claiming that at times of high water the bridge was too short for their steam boats and thus interfered with commerce. The Supreme Court found in favor of Pittsburgh, and ordered Wheeling either to raise the bridge or tear it down. Before that happened, though, Congress passed legislation authorizing the bridge . Pittsburgh sued again, and this time the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wheeling. It was by then a moot point, anyway, as enterprising steam boat builders had developed stacks which were hinged and could be lowered enough for the boats to pass under low bridges at high water.

After lunch, we went to visit the museum in the Custom House. This was very interesting. I have always known, of course, that West Virginia became a state when it broke off from Virginia in the Civil War, but it never occurred to me to wonder how that happened. I just took it for granted, but it was actually quite an endeavor, and touch-and-go right up to the last minute. Roughly, the process went like this:

Many people in the western counties were outraged by Virginia's seceding from the Union. (The votes were lopsided--the eastern counties voted overwhelmingly to secede, while the western counties voted by about 2-to-1 not to secede). A movement arose to declare the Confederate government in Richmond illegal, and to establish a new government, the Restoration Government, in Wheeling . This was done via an actual declaration, very much in the spirit of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence from England. Then the legislature of the Restoration Government petitioned the US Congress for statehood, which was granted, and went to Lincoln for signature. Lincoln debated at length, because the whole thing hinged on the fact that for a state to split, the original government of the state has to approve it, and this split was approved by the Restoration Government, not by the now-Confederate government. Of course, if the Confederate government was illegal, then maybe the Restoration government was legal, even though it was established more or less by coup. Thorny problem. Eventually Lincoln signed. The decision was never challenged in the Supreme Court (maybe due to a small matter of the Civil War?), and so it stood.

Interestingly, once West Virginia was a state, the Restoration Government moved to Alexandria, and so for two years, there were two governors of Virginia . After the south lost the war, the Restoration Government became the real government, and that governor went to Richmond and finished the term there before going back to West Virginia and getting elected to congress as a Representative from WV.

Always something interesting to learn about history!

From Wheeling, we drove to Akron, OH (about two hours away). We checked into the Akron City Centre Hotel (turned into a Ramada since we made the reservation). Then we went off to see the Akron Aeros (AA affiliate of the Cleveland Indians) and the Erie Seawolves (What's a seawolf? AA affiliate of the Detroit Tigers). Game was pretty slow--another 3 hour + event with more than 300 total pitches. Nothing much happened between the second inning (when Erie scored 4) and the 6th (when Akron scored 6--they got two earlier, so the score was 8-4). Still, you can always count on baseball to deliver up something you've never seen before, and tonight it was an enormously controversial call by the home plate umpire who called an obviously foul ball fair, on which play the first two of those six scored . We can only surmise that the umpire's explanation was that the ball was fair when it went over the base and then hit the ground foul. The ball did not bounce, mind you; this was a fly all the way. Technically, if the ball did indeed curve foul in the air, it could be called fair, but neither Tim nor I, in our roughly 90 years' combined experience watching baseball, ever saw that one called before. Of course the home team loved it. Erie subsequently collapsed (their fault), and that was just about that.

The other big excitement of the game was that the people in front of us bought the world's most disgusting ice cream sundae. Served in a full-sized baseball helmet, it consists of two pounds of brownies, five bananas, 21 scoops of ice cream, about a foot of whipped cream,and associated sprinkles, fudge sauce, and peanuts. Totally gross. They made it through about 1/4 of the monstrosity. Put me right off getting an ice cream myself. Trust me: the photos do not do it justice .

Akron made a good old college try at losing the game in the bottom of the 8th, giving up two more runs and letting the tying run come to the plate three different times, but they fell just short, and managed to pull it out 8-6 with a runner still left on base. There was an unexpected bonus in a lengthy fireworks display, and the weather was perfect, so it was a nice evening. The hotel is about 10 minutes' walk from the park, so we walked. The route took us right through a huge Italian American street fair. The party looks to be going on all night.

Tomorrow we're headed up to MIchigan and camping at Sleeping Bear Dunes. En route we will pass through Ann Arbor where my friend Sara and her husband have just moved to take up Post-Docs at U of Michigan, so we will meet up with them for lunch. I'll be out of touch for a few days (we're headed to Mackinaw Island from Sleeping Bear Dunes, and there may be no Internet there, either), but will upload all the blogs whenever I get hooked up again.