Totems, Antlers, and Art in Salamanca

We recently took a road trip from our home in New Hampshire to visit my daughter in New Mexico. I had vacation time to use up (who didn't in 2021), and we hadn't seen my daughter and her husband in a while. Our idea for a visit started to have lots of appeal. 

We contemplated flying there, but the prospect of air travel under pandemic protocols, unexpected cancellations, unreliable schedules, and the uptick in air rage on top of everything else that was already stressful and uncomfortable about flying was not appealing. It didn't take much convincing that driving there was the best plan.

Our Google Timeline Shows Where We Stopped Along The Way

Angelika is the master trip planner, so she planned out the route. We decided to not make specific plans, but just drive as far as we wanted per day and then find a place to stay when we got tired. Having the smartphone and internet access on the road makes this really easy.

To help break up the trip, Angelika mapped out "points of interest" along our route. This would give us a chance to get out of the car and stretch our legs every once in a while, and hopefully see something fun and interesting. We visited a number of the obvious places you would likely want to see (Niagara Falls, National Parks, and the like). There are a huge number of lesser known and arguably just as worthwhile stops as well. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/ is a great resource for discovering some of the more unusual ones. This turned out to be a genius idea and will be the subject of more great topics for a bunch of future blog posts.

In this post I want to tell you about the exceptional place we stopped in Salamanca, NY and who we met there.

Near the end of our trip we took a short detour to see "Carving of Man Treed By Bairs". This was described on Roadside America as follows:

Dead tree on someone's lawn, turned into art with a chainsaw. The man who owns the house is the one treed by the bears.

When we arrived at the address, we found a house on the main road into town along with many houses on either side, but this one had a totem pole in the yard. This is what we saw:

Man Treed By Bairs

While we were admiring the excellent wood carving we met the owner of the property, Bill Steckman. He was a very friendly guy, and an amazing artist. He showed us around his workshop where he specializes in making art from antlers...all kinds of antlers. He showed us a fantastic rocking chair he made from moose antlers.

Some of the most intricate and fantastic carvings in antlers, dozens of pieces in cabinet after cabinet in his workshop.

Outside in a gazebo (closed off for winter) he had a life sized reproduction of the scene from the painting of the dogs playing poker with wood carved figures. 

We must have spent a couple of hours visiting and listening to stories from Bill's life (he likes to talk). I noticed in his shop he had a Seebees logo on the wall. When I asked him about it he told me he was a Seebee in World War II, enlisted right after graduating High School, and served on a troop transport in the Pacific. He shared many fascinating stories, but you are probably better off hearing them from the horses mouth.

Bill Steckman (2019) on World War II

You never know what or who you will find when you follow one of these off the beaten track roadside attractions. We had a great time tracking them down and experiencing them as part of our trip. They have become some of the most memorable experiencing we've enjoyed together.