Travel Maven Blog ...... David Molyneaux posts from TheTravelMavens.com

Cruising Lake Michigan on the S.S. Badger ferry, Ludington to Manitowoc

And on to Wisconsin’s charming Door County

In October’s late afternoon sun, passengers on the S.S. Badger relax their way to Ludington, Mich., with a nap, a book, a game of chess, and gazing at Lake Michigan on one of the last ferry runs of the year. (Photos by David G. Molyneaux, TravelMavensBlog.com) CLICK on Picture for full screen

                                      Published by Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer

By David G. Molyneaux | TheTravelMavens.com

LUDINGTON, Michigan – May brings the return of travelers, lining up their vehicles at Ludington’s Lake Michigan docks to board the famed S.S. Badger. The ferry is a National Historic Landmark, as well as an enjoyable ride across the lake toward summer vacation destinations in Wisconsin above Milwaukee: to Door County, and all points west.

For Ohioans, the ferry between Ludington and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, is an alternative to the laborious multi-lane highways to Milwaukee, including the traffic crawl through Chicago. From Cleveland, the total drive to Manitowoc, north of Milwaukee, usually is at least eight hours. Charming beach vacation towns in Door County are another two hours north.

Riding the Badger is not really a timely shortcut — the 400-mile drive from Cleveland to Ludington is about six hours and the ferry ride another four hours. The choice is less about time and more about the fun that includes a break from the tedious concrete.

Besides, nearly everybody likes a boat ride. The 410-foot-long Badger, launched in 1953 to haul rail cars across Lake Michigan, is designed for all weather. You may sit outside gazing at the lake, inside near the windows or find a quiet spot to curl up in a chair for a snooze, perhaps play a rousing game of cards, while the captain does all the work to get you and your vehicle to Wisconsin.

My year without travel: Reflecting on the pandemic and staying close to home

Fran Golden and David G. Molyneaux, Sitka, Alaska 2017

'I miss connecting with fellow travelers, even simple smiles and nods of recognition ... I miss the kindness of strangers that appears naturally on the road — and from locals I encounter along the way'

By David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com, republished from The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com

 

Without a building or human in sight, we arrived at a fork on a woodsy trail with no idea where we were going, for which we were grateful.

A serendipitous choice passed through a patch of red and yellow leaves still dangling in November, perhaps just waiting for these two world travelers who were thankful even for the slightest sense of being lost in Berlin.

No, not that Berlin. Germany and all the other countries of the world are off the discovery charts in this self-protective year of 2020. Instead, we were exploring a ridge of trails about an hour’s drive west of Cleveland in Edison Woods MetroPark in Berlin Township, Erie County.

Poland? No, Cleveland. The bust of Frédéric Chopin, composer and virtuoso pianist, is in the Polish Garden on East Boulevard in Rockefeller Park (Photos by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

What a lifestyle change this year has been, without travel.

Molyneaux inducted into Press Club of Cleveland's Journalism Hall of Fame

Thanks for these fine words from Plain Dealer columnist Ted Diadiun

 

 In the summer of 1967, David Glenn Molyneaux walked off the picturesque campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and into a far different aesthetic: the smoke-filled cacophony of the newsroom of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. He was assigned to the newspaper’s busy police beat on Payne Avenue, housed in a tiny, noisy room so shabby that David’s father wondered aloud why his son had bothered to go to college.

 

Molyneaux in Berlin 1989

Fifty years and thousands of bylines later from all over the world, Molyneaux was inducted into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame during a ceremony of the Press Club of Cleveland on Thursday (Nov. 2, 2017). #PressClubCleve

 

Molyneaux had majored in business economics, and he was also an editor of the campus newspaper, The Miami Student — a combination that would serve him well. In Cleveland, after two years in the Army (1968-70), he quickly began climbing the career ladder.

 

He graduated from the police beat and late-night rewrite bank to more high-profile reporting assignments, and then rose to day city editor, to city editor, to associate editor and chief editorial writer, to editor of the editorial pages, and, for the last 24 of his 40 years at the newspaper, to editor and chief travel writer of the city’s first and only stand-alone Sunday travel section.

The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's Susan Glaser, honored for travel coverage

A special congratulations to my hometown newspaper, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio, for winning the 2015 Bronze award for Best Travel Coverage in newspapers of less than 350,000 circulation, in the annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.

Susan Glaser

Judges singled out The Plain Dealer's travel editor Susan Glaser:

"The energetic Susan Glaser writes the cover story or stories and adds a column each week. That gives the Cleveland Plain Dealer section a local brand. Her topics range from Disneyland to small cities in Ohio, and she writes with a sense of authority while still providing easily accessible information. Compilation stories, such as four fall getaways, add variety to the city-specific features. Stories on art exhibits and service pieces round out the section."

Glaser's work also is published on the newspaper's website, Cleveland.com.

A list of the winners, the judges’ comments, and a video of all winners are available on the website of the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.

(Caveats: The writer of this blog, David G. Molyneaux, is president of the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, which oversees the annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. Molyneaux is not involved in the judging that is done, for payment, by a major university journalism school, which for 2015 was University of Missouri. Molyneaux also was travel editor at The Plain Dealer for 24 years, and Susan Glaser worked with Molyneaux as a travel writer and editor during some of those years.)

 

Cutting to the bone for a Vegas steak of Certified Angus Beef

Playing with words is what marketing people do. To consumers, marketing words often seem meant to mystify. This is the season for it. When I’m not traveling on the road or sailing on a cruise ship, I hang out in Ohio, where I heard enough obfuscating ad words and phrases in the 2012 presidential campaign to last me for a lifetime.

Marketing words in Wooster, Ohio, were more fun this fall, as I joined chefs slicing into a beef carcass in search of what marketing people are calling a Vegas steak.

 

Chef Rory Schepisi of Vega, Texas, slices into beef rib steak in the hunt for the hidden Vegas steak (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)