TWO OF A KIND

2005 CROSS-COUNTRY TOUR

What an amazing summer we had!  This summer we were not just Two of a Kind, but “Two of a Kind squared” or “Four of a Kind”!  Our twin 10-year-old sons, Ari and Jason, accompanied us on our first-ever cross-country tour and sang and played with us as well.  We spent about a year planning for the trip and we booked gigs in locations across the northern part of the U.S.  We mostly stayed at people’s homes and all of our hosts were very generous.  It was a wonderful experience for our entire family. Here are some highlights:

• Viewing Chicago from the top of the Sears Tower
• Seeing bison and elk in Yellowstone
• Driving along the Oregon Coast
• Hiking around Jenny Lake in the Tetons
• Viewing cool rock formations in Arches National Park
• Singing many concerts with sons Jason and Ari
• Listening to lots of great audio-books on long drives
• Seeing the beauty and variety of this country
• Enjoying the company of family and friends

Read on for more details…

PITTSBURGH, PA AND ANN ARBOR, MI (June 24 – July 1)

We headed out to Pittsburgh on June 24th and stayed with Terri, a former colleague of Jenny’s.  On the 25th we did a radio show for “The Saturday Light Brigade” at the Children’s Museum in Pittsburgh.  Thanks to Larry Berger for having us on his show and playing our music through the years.  Then we drove to Michigan and stayed for a week in Ann Arbor with David’s parents.  We had several performances there and the kids went to the Leslie Science Center camp. We also spent some time rehearsing as a quartet!

CHICAGO, IL AND WISCONSIN (July 1-8)

The real touring began in Chicago.  In addition to performing several shows at the Chicago Children’s Museum, we were able to do some sight-seeing.  What a beautiful city!  The weather was perfect, and Lake Michigan sparkled a turquoise blue in the sun.  The Museum is located on Navy Pier, so Ari and Jason also got to enjoy the rides there.  We went to the top of Sears Tower, the tallest building in the U.S.  After a lengthy wait, we saw some breath-taking views of the city.  On July 3rd, we were invited to watch the fireworks from the Children’s Museum 2nd floor windows.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t get all the lights off, so we made our way down to the Pier to view the fireworks.  The fireworks were great, but it took us over 2 hours to get back to our hosts!  We enjoyed a local 4th of July parade in Highland Park with our hosts Lloyd, Caren and Sam.  They also took us to a wonderful outdoor Chicago Symphony concert at Ravinia.

Our next stop was Green Bay, Wisconsin.  We stayed with fellow children’s musician, Billy Grisack, better known as Mr. Billy, along with his wife Cathi and kids Will and Taelor.  Ari and Jason especially enjoyed staying at Billy’s house because his son is about the same age as them, plus they have a pool, trampoline and video games.  Kid heaven! In Green Bay we did our first “Dragons, Dreams, and Daring Deeds” library concert with Ari and Jason.  Together we had re-written their “I’ve Heard About Dinosaurs” song to be about dragons.  They sang solos and did a fabulous job.  We also incorporated some Renaissance music with 3 recorders and guitar.  During this tour, Jason and Ari started learning to sing in harmony on many of our songs.  

Then we visited another children’s musician friend, Tom Pease and his wife Louise, who live on a farm in central Wisconsin.  His house is powered by solar panels, and he generates all his own electricity and heat.  They have a huge garden and we had a wonderful meal of home-raised organically fed chicken, venison, tofu and garden veggies.  What a treat!  Then we sang around a campfire and did some star-gazing.

Even though we tried to make the trip very logical, there were a few times we had to backtrack.  For instance, after doing a lovely outdoor concert at the Madison Children’s Museum, we had to drive back to Chicago for a gig at the Brookfield Zoo.  This time we stayed with some friends of the family, Jodi and Ted, who live right in Chicago on Lakeshore Drive.  The view from their apartment was amazing.  

The Brookfield Zoo is a very nice zoo and we highly recommend it.  Jason and Ari enjoyed getting a ride in the golf-cart and going behind-the-scenes.  We also saw a few of the exhibits including “The Swamp” with alligators, birds and turtles, and the “Reptile House” (Ari’s favorite).  The zoo had a special theme called “Go Totally Bear in July” so we incorporated bear songs into our zoo repertoire.  We will be back at the zoo for a Halloween show on October 23rd.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (July 8-12)

After the zoo we drove a long way to Minneapolis.  One of the ways we kept occupied in the car was to listen to audio-books.  We listened to the Silmarillion and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as Eragon, the new Harry Potter book and many others.  We took the library fantasy theme to heart!  In Minneapolis we stayed with some fans and now friends, Larry and Roz and their daughters Jade and Francesca.  They fed us wonderful food and the kids had fun playing together.  Minneapolis was hot so we did some indoor things including the St. Paul Science Museum (with a fun exhibit called “Animal Grossology”) and the Mall of America.  Ari and Jason loved Camp Snoopy, the indoor amusement park.  We also saw another children’s musician friend, Barb Tilsen, who took us to the famous sculpture park with the cherry on the spoon.

On our last day there we had an outdoor concert through Eden Prairie Parks and Recreation at an amphitheatre.  It was a muggy 95 degrees, but we still had a good crowd with kids dancing on the stage, and David even got reacquainted with a high school friend.  Then it was off to the plains of South Dakota.  That’s when the terrain really changed!

SOUTH DAKOTA AND WYOMING (July 12-14)

Some people had told us that the first half of South Dakota is boring because it is so flat, but we enjoyed it because it was so different from the east. We made a few “corny” stops at the Corn Palace and at Wall Drug. There were billboards every few feet advertising Wall Drug, including one in Minnesota that said “Only 355 miles to Wall Drug!”

We enjoyed our drive through Badlands National Park. The scenery is quite striking – bands of red and buff tones across the jagged buttes. We also drove through the Black Hills and stopped at Mt. Rushmore. We were reminded of a song we helped 5^th graders write at Governor Mifflin School near Reading, PA.

Black Hills of South Dakota

Faces carved in stone

Four great Presidents

All well known.

We stayed with some Servas hosts in Sheridan, WY. Servas is a wonderful peace/ travel organization we’ve been members of since the mid-1980’s. We have been both hosts and travelers for many years and have met people from all over the world. We stayed at the home of Johnnie and Carl along with some Servas guests from Sweden. Johnnie and Carl are big motorcycle enthusiasts and have biked all over North and South America.

We drove from Sheridan to Yellowstone National Park. On the way we went over the Big Horn Mountains and hiked up to Medicine Wheel, a sacred Native American site. It was a circle with stones and offerings made of cloth, feathers, beads and other objects. We were allowed to walk around it, but we had to be quiet and we couldn’t take any pictures of the circle. It was much cooler up there and there was even some snow.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK (July 14-17)

Both of us went to Yellowstone as children, and we were eager to show Jason and Ari all of the incredible natural wonders of the country’s first National Park. We stayed in the Canyon Lodge area. We visited the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and hiked along the rim trail where we could see views of the upper and lower falls. Yellowstone got its name for a reason - the stone in the canyon has a yellowish tinge. Ari and Jason were not wild about hiking along the canyon rim without a rail, but we didn’t have any mishaps. Jenny’s parents visited us in Yellowstone and we saw lots of hot springs, mud pots, steam vents, geysers and thermal lakes. Of course, we saw Old Faithful. Just before Old Faithful erupted, Beehive geyser erupted behind it and was quite dramatic to see the two together. Beehive geyser gets even higher than Old Faithful, but it’s much less predictable.

We saw some animals too – particularly buffalo, deer and elk as well as birds and some rodents. We didn’t see any bears or wolves, though. Jason and Ari did the Junior Ranger program, learned a lot and got patches. We drove through Mammoth Springs on the way out of the park.

WASHINGTON (July 17-22)

We drove many hours through Montana and Idaho to Spokane, WA. It was a beautiful drive through the mountains. Our path crossed the Lewis and Clark trail many times. Seeing it first-hand it’s hard to imagine crossing the area on horses and by foot not knowing what was coming next. We had a nice visit with our hosts in Spokane – Carlos, Janine, Michaela and Zach. Ari and Jason enjoyed playing Star Wars and legos with Zach. Carlos is a wonderful musician, and we originally connected with him because he plays our CDs on his radio show.

Then we spent almost a week in Seattle, WA. Our friend Hope’s sister Becky and her family hosted us. They were so generous, making us lots of wonderful meals. Jason and Ari especially loved playing with all the toys and games with their sons Peyton and Austin. Our time in Seattle was devoted to performing. We did 10 shows in 5 days. The concerts around Seattle (mostly libraries plus one independent book store) went very well and the boys enjoyed doing 3-part vocal harmony with us.

The only sight-seeing we got to do was to go to Pike St. Market. What a wonderful place – gorgeous, cheap flowers, all kinds of produce, fish, arts and crafts…and the berries – Yum! We met up with some Servas hosts we’d stayed with the last time we visited Seattle – Bunny and her daughter, Wayana. We saw a fun performance by a guy who balanced one guitar on his chin while playing the other one behind his back (and they were Martins!). We wished we could have stayed longer and seen more sights.

OREGON (July 22-25)

After our final library performance in the Seattle area, we headed south to the gorgeous Oregon coast. We stayed with a Servas host named Ginger who gave us maps of the coast and told us which places to visit and what to skip. On Saturday, we performed at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We performed in the theater and we had full houses for both shows. In addition, we got to see the aquarium including a special exhibit on turtles (of course we sang “I am a Turtle”). After the shows, we drove along the coast. It was beautiful, with rugged cliffs jutting into the sea. It was much cooler and windier than any of the other places we visited on this trip. On Saturday night, we saw an incredible night sky full of stars. You could see the Milky Way, millions and millions of faint stars - many more than you can see in the city.

That was the end of our westward trek. Then we headed east to Portland. We didn’t get to see much of Portland, but we did enjoy Powell Books, a bookstore as long and wide as a city block. We spent two hours there and barely saw a small fraction of it. We stayed with another children’s musician, Greta Petersen, and her husband Mark Hanson, who is an excellent guitarist. They had a potluck for us and other Children’s Music Network members, and we got to hang out and play music.

IDAHO AND GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK (July 25-29)

The next day we did our longest drive – 10 1/2 hours. Though it was long, the landscape was very beautiful. We saw a few things along the way. First we stopped at Multnomah Falls, a very steep double waterfall. Then we traveled along the Columbia River Gorge until we got to the high desert. We drove through more mountains and prairie lands until we finally got to Idaho Falls where Jenny’s parents were staying. We had a few days of R & R, saw Jenny’s Aunt and Uncle, caught up on business and then drove a few hours to Grand Teton National Park.

The Teton range is so beautiful with the snowy mountains piercing the sky.

We took a hike around Jenny Lake (Jenny’s favorite lake) up to Hidden Falls. It was fun and we sang along the way. There were lots of people there, but we didn’t see too many wild animals. We stayed in Colter Bay and went to a campfire ranger program where Jason and Ari got to roast marshmallows. The next day we went for a horseback ride that was fun, but we all got sore butts. On the way out of the park we spotted a moose somewhat far away, but with our binoculars we were able to see it quite well.

GRAND JUNCTION, CO AND SALT LAKE CITY, UT (July 29 – August 2)

We drove all the way from Idaho Falls to Grand Junction, about an 8-hour drive. On the way we stopped at Arches National Park. Wow! It was very hot, but the views were terrific. The colors were so vivid – red and green against a bright blue sky. The rock formations were amazing. We spent the next day driving and hiking through Colorado National Monument, a canyon with some more interesting rock formations. Then in the evening we did a family show at a Unitarian Church in Grand Junction. We were surprised and delighted to meet a family there from Mt. Airy who knew our music quite well. The next morning we led the Sunday service about the Legacy of Gandhi, mostly through songs. Many thanks to Lance who hosted us in Grand Junction.

Although it was going out of our way, we were honored to go next to Salt Lake City, UT for a very special concert. Mary and Markus had a son, Simon, who died last year at the age of 7 of neuroblastoma, a kind of cancer. He was a fan of Two of a Kind, and they wanted to have a tribute concert for him. While there we got to know a bit more about Simon. He had a lot of wisdom for someone so young. If you’d like to find out more about him and/or his disease, visit his website at www.simonsplace.org. They have a younger daughter, Miriam, who is also a fan and had a good time having a water balloon fight with Ari, Jason and Markus.

On Monday we went to Utah’s Hogle Zoo for the concert. They donated free tickets to the zoo for families from bereavement and cancer groups. There was a large crowd for the concert and we sang many of Simon’s and Miriam’s favorite songs. We sang “Cranes Over Hiroshima” because it was a favorite of Simon’s and because it was close to the 60^th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the one-year anniversary of Simon’s death. Thanks so much to Mary and Markus for having us do this special concert and to the Zoo for hosting it.

DENVER, CO AND HOME (August 2-9)

We stayed outside of Denver with Jenny’s cousin Barb and her husband Gary. They live on a farm and have horses, two cats, two iguanas, and three dogs. We loved the dogs especially. While in Denver we went to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature and learned a lot about space and dinosaurs.

Then we spent three long days driving toward home, broken up by stops at the St. Louis Arch, David’s Aunt and Uncle in Bloomington, IN and friends Beth, Goetz, Felix and Benjamin in Pittsburgh. The final few days we went to an Artist Retreat for PennPAT in central PA. We were very glad to finally get home. It was a wonderful trip, but “there’s no place like home”.