Bessie The Traveling Cow

Here's a few things to know about me: I've been to 18 countries, 40 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories. I post one new adventure every day - old ones can be found on my timeline. Please REPOST and LIKE daily to help others find me. No trickery - all pictures are real!

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twenty six, here's one last photo from Sleepy Hollow. This is the grave of Catriena Ecker Van Tessel who was the real-life inspiration for Washington Irving’s "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". She died in 1793.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twenty five I'm on Belle Isle, which is an island in the Detroit River in Michigan. This is the anchor from the Edmund Fitzgerald. The ship sunk in Lake Superior in 1975 and was memorialized by Gordon Lightfoot's song.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twenty four I'm back at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago for another ghost story. This is the "Girl in the Glass Box." Local folklore claims that the life-sized statue vanishes during summer thunderstorms.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twenty three I visited the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmond, VA. This creepy bust of the famous author is a very fitting tribute, I think.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twenty two I visited the gravesite of Jesse James in Kearney, Missouri. James was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of a gang. He was shot and killed in 1882 by a member of his own gang.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day 21 I visited the site of the Great Elm in Boston. This tree stood for over two centuries before falling in a storm in 1876. Many people where hanged on the limbs of this tree: witches, Quakers, pirates, Native Americans...

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twenty I visited this disturbing statue in Arvada, Colorado called "Cold War Horse". It honors former workers at nearby Rocky Flats. From 1952 to 1992 the facility manufactured plutonium triggers for U.S. nuclear warheads.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day nineteen I am outside the home of the master of horror himself, Stephen King! This famous Bangor, Maine resident often references the number 19 in his works so I thought it would be an appropriate picture to share today.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day eighteen I'm in Salem, Massachusetts. This is the place where they burned all the witches, or in some cases hanged, as it was with poor Margaret Scott in 1692.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day seventeen I visited Old City Cemetery in Galveston, TX. It features mausoleums and nineteenth-century tombs. Many believe that it's one of the most haunted places in the city! Ghost walks are common here.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day fifteen I return to the famous cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. This time to view the grave of Washington Irving, author of the creepy tale of the Headless Horseman. Irving died in 1859.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day fourteen, I'm at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Behind me is Eternal Silence. Local folklore claims that if you stare directly into hood and look into its eyes, you will immediately receive a vision of your own death.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day thirteen I visited Westminster Abbey in London. Did you know over 3,300 are buried here, INSIDE? Below me are the remains of 26 monks who died in 1348 of the black death.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day twelve I visited a really cool cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri but I just loved this old gravestone I found!

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day eleven I've got another tale of death for you. This is the very bed where President Lincoln drew his last breath in 1865. This is inside the Petersen House, directly across the street from Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day ten I visited the gravesite of legendary author H.P. Lovecraft in Providence, RI. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, but his legacy is also apparent in terms like "Lovecraftian horror".

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day nine I am in Tombstone, AZ. This is the exact site of the OK Corral shootout where three were killed and three more were wounded. While lasting less than a minute, the gunfight has been the subject of many books and films.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day eight, I'm sharing this creepy find from underneath the Old North Church in Boston. There's a haunted brick - someone stole it from the church, had a string of bad luck, then anonymously returned it. That gives me chills!

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day seven I visited the gravesite of the king of creepy himself: Edgar Allan Poe. This is inside the Westminster Hall & Burying Ground in Baltimore, MD where he died in 1849.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day six I visited the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico. This place is focused largely on the 1947 Roswell incident and later supposed UFO incidents around the world. Believer or skeptic, it's a fun place to visit!

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day five I visited the limousine that was carrying JFK when he was assassinated in Dallas, TX on November 22, 1963. This is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day four I am in the Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, IA. Behind me is the The Black Angel, an 8.5-foot-tall bronze monument commissioned in 1912 by Teresa Feldevert. Oxidation over the years caused the statue to turn black.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day three I visited the catacombs underneath Paris, France. These are actual human bones from the 1800's and yes, it's as unsettling and creepy as it sounds! But also endlessly fascinating!

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! For day two I am at the County Historical Museum in Manistee, Michigan where I found this unsettling two-headed cow's head. This calf was born in 1889 and did not survive being born. Naturally, they stuffed it.

It's spooky season and I've got 31 days of creepy adventures for you! We're going to start in the Burying Ground of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, NY. This was the setting for Washington Irving's famous story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I went looking for the Headless Horseman last spring.

Tomorrow officially begins "spooky season" around here! I have 31 creepy adventures to share with you all month long - one per day. Please follow along! Tonight I share a picture from the fall display last year at the Indianapolis Zoo in Indiana.

As I announced yesterday, I am moooooving to Kentucky! In a couple weeks I will be saying goodbye to my home of the past 30+ years of adventuring: Kalamazoo, Michigan. This has been a lovely place, but off to new adventures soon!

Looking out over the Kentucky River a couple weeks ago in the Raven Run Nature Sanctuary outside Lexington, Kentucky. This is going to be my new Kentucky home next month! This old cow is mooooving!

Looking out over Niagara Falls from the Canadian side in 2001. If you're new here, I post one of my many adventures each night. Please give them a LIKE or REPOST if you are enjoying so that others can find me as well!

The baseball season is winding down and I am remembering my trip to Tigers Stadium in Detroit in September 1999. This was the last week baseball was played at this ballpark before it was torn down.

In 2023 I went searching for the Great Pumpkin at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio!

This is downtown Lancaster, New Hampshire. They have an amazingly cool Fox logo for the city and yet they don’t sell any merch. This baffled me during my visit in May.

Last summer I visited the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. What a worthwhile experience!

I witnessed a reenactment of the famous Lincoln Douglas debate at the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL a couple years ago.

On the factory floor in the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey from my visit this past spring. Things invented here: the world's first motion picture camera, the nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery, and advanced phonograph and record technology.

This is the Japanese Bell of Peace and Friendship in Des Moines, IA which was a thank-you gift for the people of Iowa in December of 1961. Two years prior, Japan had been devastated by two typhoons and the people of Iowa donated 36 breeding hogs to help with their recovery. I was here in 2025.

I heard that CNN just got kicked out of the White House. We should all be against that - holding the government accountable is one of the most important tenents of democracy and a free press is a necessary part of that, even a stuffed cow knows that! This is CNN HQ in Atlanta from my 2001 visit.

View of downtown Toronto, Canada from the CN tower from my visit last spring.

I’m tagging along this week as my handlers plan a relocation from Michigan to Kentucky. Today we took a side trip to the Woodford Reserve Distillery outside Versailles. Soon, this area is going to be my new home!

Imagine being a butterfly in Key West, Florida and getting stuck indoors! Actually, they probably love it in there, I've never seen such humidity before in my life! My visit in 2024 was a lot of fun though.

Good evening, friends! I'm running a bit late tonight, but here's a wonderful photo of myself in Columbus, Ohio in front of the Arnold Schwarzenegger body builder statue from my visit in 2023. I think he's stronger than me...

I always think of the local county fair when I think about fall. In Michigan where I am from, the local fair is a big part of rural living - at least for a week! This is from 2023 at the Hillsdale County Fair in Hillsdale, MI.

Here's a cool photo from Death Valley National Park from 2025. It is the hottest, driest, and lowest national park in the US, spanning 3.4 million acres across CA and NV. The highest recorded temperature in the world was recorded in Death Valley’s Furnace Creek at 134 Fahrenheit in July 1913.

I'm coming at you a little early today. As we remember the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I have one more to share. This is the memorial at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, made from some of the steel recovered from the Twin Towers in New York. I paid my respects last fall.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that shattered our nation in 2001. This summer I spent some time at the memorial in New York City paying my respects to those who lost their lives that day.

I'm celebrating back to school with a tour of colleges and universities! Tonight wraps up the tour for this year with my stop at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Founded: 1801 Enrollment: 41,650 Nickname: Gamecocks

I'm celebrating back to school with a tour of colleges and universities! Follow along every night to see where I've visited. Tonight is the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Founded: 1889 Enrollment: 25,441 Nickname: Lobos

I'm celebrating back to school with a tour of colleges and universities! Follow along every night to see where I've visited. Tonight is The University of Chicago, in Illinois. President Barack Obama taught law here between 1992 and 2004: Founded: 1890 Enrollment: 18,732 Nickname: Maroons