ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?

Tuesday, July 31 – Since our arrival in Canton 12 days again, we have been having a wonderful time visiting with family and friends. One stop we made is to our daughter, Kelly's, new place. She has accepted a new teaching position in Parma City Schools. She will be teaching math at one of the high schools. She has also moved. We think these apartments used to be condos.

Kelly's new place.

After visiting, we took Kelly and Dave out to dinner. How nice it is to be with her.

This week is the biggest week in our hometown. It is Pro Football Hall of Fame week. The HOF opened in Canton, Ohio, on September 7, 1963, with 17 charter enshrinees.

There are now a total 267 members of the Hall of Fame, including the most recent six honorees announced in February 2012.

Canton, Ohio, was selected as the location for the Hall of Fame for three reasons:
First, the NFL was founded in Canton in 1920 (at that time it was known as the American Professional Football Association);
Second, the now-defunct Canton Bulldogs were the first two-time champion of the NFL and were based in Canton during the first few years of the league;
Finally, the community of Canton successfully lobbied the NFL to have the Hall built in their city.

Groundbreaking for the building was held on August 11, 1962. The original building contained just two rooms, and 19,000 square feet of interior space. In April 1970, ground was broken for the first of many expansions.

This WAS the front of the Hall of Fame until a few months ago.

This is now the new front. It is really beautiful. They retained the football shaped dome as a side entrance.
 

Visitors entering the museum are greeted by a seven-foot bronze statue of Jim Thorpe, considered a legend of pro football dating back to his days with the Canton Bulldogs in the early 1900s. There are the Teams of the NFL Exhibition Area, the Hall of Fame Gallery, Pro Football Adventure Room, Moments, Memories & Mementos Gallery, and The Lamar Hunt Super Bowl Gallery just to name a few of the areas inside the Hall.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game is an annual National Football League exhibition game that is held the weekend of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's induction ceremonies. The game is played at Fawcett Stadium, which is located next door to the Hall of Fame building. It is traditionally the first game in the NFL's preseason.

This year's enshrines are Jack Butler, Dermontti Dawson, Chris Doleman, Cortez Kennedy, Curtis Martin, and Willie Roaf. They will be formally inducted during the Enshrinement Ceremony held in Fawcett Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 4.

This year's game is between the Arizona Cardinals and the New Orleans Saints.

The kickoff for this big week's events started two weeks ago with the Balloon Festival. This week there are several autograph sessions with past enshrinees, the Ribs Burn-off starting on Wednesday-Friday, HOF Fashion Show on Friday afternoon, Enshrinees' Gold Jacket Dinner Friday evening, Timken Grand Parade on Saturday, 2012 Enshrinement and concluding with the HOF game played on Sunday night. Marsha will be attending the big parade so be prepared for a post on that event.

We found this map that represents the NFL team locations and fan base. Someone did a pretty good job in designing it. We are located where you see the Cleveland Brown's helmet in Ohio.

Marsha is THRILLED about the hummingbirds this year. She says she has an excuse for why the house isn't clean…HUMMINGBIRDS. She sits by the window starring at them, or she is running outside with the camera to take another 4,000 photos of them. GEESH…enough all ready.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!

THE GORDON STOCKADE…CUSTER, SD

Thursday, July 26 – All is going great here in Canton, Ohio. We have been very busy visiting family and friends. We will summarize some of those visits in the future posts.

We will be doing some flashbacks to places we have visited but did not have the time to post. Our first flashback came early this month in Custer, SD…The Gordon Stockade.

In the summer of 1874, an expedition led by Lt. Colonel George A. Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills. Under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, however, this region belonged to the Plains Indians, and white settlement was not allowed.

Twenty-eight people left Sioux City, Iowa in October of 1874 headed to the Black Hills in search of gold.  They reached the Black Hills in December.  Being in the Black Hills at that time was illegal, as it violated the Fort Laramie Treaty. 

Smart Indian…read what he did.

Upon their arrival, the Gordon Party built a log fortress on the bank of French Creek to protect themselves from possible Lakota attacks.

The Gordon Stockade

Annie Tallent is noted as being the first white woman to enter the Black Hills. She was an adventurous 47-year-old woman looking to strike it rich with her lawyer husband, David, and 9-year-old son.

A replica of one of the cabins.

Within five months, the stockade was discovered by the US Cavalry in 1875, and the party members were taken to Fort Laramie. They were not charged with any crimes and many of them ended up back in the Black Hills searching for gold. The Gordon Party's stay was short lived and not very profitable.

The Black Hills would never be the same. The expedition found gold in French Creek near the location of the Stockade Even though the findings were meager, news inflated the finds. Thus began the most famed gold rushes in American history.

Today's Gordon Stockade is the third replica built on the original site. The first was constructed by the citizens of Custer in 1925, and in 1941, the Civilian Conservation Corpsmen from Camp Narrows rebuilt the entire structure. Through the years, the outer walls and cabins weathered away until the park had to close the Stockade in the late 1990s due to visitor safety concerns.

The ones falling down.

Because the Stockade played a role in the history of the Black Hills, the park formed the an advisory committee to keep this historical landmark. Working together, the park and local advisory committee secured funding to once again reconstruct the Gordon Stockade.

Today, as you approach the Gordon Stockade, interpretive signs tell the story of this short lived illegal occupation in 1874 and 1875. The visit is free and open year round.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!

HELLO CANTON, OHIO

Friday, July 20 – We have returned to “the land of our roots” - Canton, Ohio. We are here to visit family and friends, take care of doctor appointments, and RELAX! Our only objective is to escape the area BEFORE cold weather and snow.

We are booked at the Bear Creek KOA for a month. This is the only KOA we stay at during our travels because of the lack of alternatives here in the Canton area. We are not very fond of KOA's. They have many family oriented programs that we do not use and would rather not pay a premium for, but this park is well situated near family so we're here for now!

We are in site # 19, a long term site (30 days +) with 50 amp electric, water, and sewer. The sites are gravel and the streets are newly paved. The campground is built on a hillside so all the sites are tiered. We have a much better site than last year. We have a larger side yard, perfect for sitting out and plenty of space for the picnic table. We haven't had any neighbors since we arrived. All-in-all, it's not a bad campground.

Site 19

Looking left.

Looking right.

We will do a tour of the campground in another post.

After we got set up, we went to visit dad. Marsha did not tell her dad she was coming. She wanted to surprise him, AND boy was he surprised.

Dad opening the door.

He recognizes it is us…PRICELESS!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!