Day 148 - In Archbold - Two Far 2021 - Sooo... Far

September 3, 2021

Day 148 - In Archbold

Breakfast area at the Sauder Heritage Inn.

We spent today seeing Sauder Village, a living history museum established by Erie Sauder, who founded Sauder Furniture here in Archbold, OH. You are all probably familiar with Sauder's unassembled case goods. Sauder is credited with inventing "RTA" or ready to assemble furniture.

The Sauder Village has areas depicting life in northwest Ohio in the mid-1800's and also a 1920's street which was fun.

We started on the village green which was ringed with businesses which would have existed in the mid nineteenth century.

The first building we saw was the farm shop where Erie Sauder got his start in woodworking.

There were several shops to visit. Most of them seemed focused on making items to be sold in the gift shop.

In the basket shop, they were making what they called an "Appalachian Egg Basket", a design they said was brought by Irish immigrants. This is the extra large size. I don't remember seeing a basket with this shape before.

In the tinsmith's was this impressive chandelier. The man there said it was made by one of their tinsmiths and had won a national award.

The pioneer farm settlement depicted life here between 1834 and 1908.

The barn is like many we've seen and we learned it is called a "bank barn".

This was the only livestock in the barn when we walked through.

I watched the goat being milked and found out she had given birth to three kids in May.

While I watched the milking, Kerry was out getting acquainted with the kids.

We always learn something new when we visit museums. While talking to the person milking the goat, we learned that a castrated goat or sheep is called a wether. Also, while visiting the grist mill, we learned about querns.

Quern was another term that we had not heard of until today.

In the 1800's cabin, there was a lamp I hadn't seen before. It's called a Betty lamp and used whale oil for fuel. It can be picked up from the stand and hung up in the room.

In the 1800's house, we met Linda. We talked about bike touring and she told us her husband, Roger, had done a coast to coast bike trip when he was in college. Roger was working on the 1920's street today.

We stopped at several places on the 1920's street before finding Roger at the barber shop. We enjoyed hearing about this cross country trip in 1970.

The 1920's street recreates a small northwestern Ohio town in that time. The buildings are new, but some of the interiors are from the period.

Car parked on the street - now available in colors other than black!

In the hardware store, a very new appliance for the time - an electric stove and oven. The woman there said she thought it was from 1927.

On the 1920's street were a grocery, bank, movie theater, clothing store, hardware store and gas station. There was also this barber shop. I thought that of all the businesses on that street, the one that is the least changed today is the barber shop. Banking, viewing movies, retail shopping and transportation are vastly different than they were 100 years ago, but going to the barber shop, sitting down to wait your turn and then getting a haircut hasn't changed much since the 1920's.

We'll be back on the road tomorrow. The last four riding days are routed and the hotels are reserved. It won't be long until we're finished going Soo Far in 2021.

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DAVID FAULKNERWhat an amazing 2021!
Your strength and positive attitudes contributed greatly to your extraordinary rides
Take care, safe arrival home
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