- Today, when you mention TikTok, most people think about an app on the phone, but we are going analog, in the telling of time.

There will also be alpacas, history, wall climbing, and did I mention alpacas?

All that and more on Backyard Journeys, with me, Deann.

I like your face.

Why is travel such a hassle?

First scour the internet, site after site, looking for the best deals, packing enough clothes, so as not to use the laundry.

Then there are lines.

Lines to check in, lines to lose your shoes and to be scanned.

Then hours squeezed in a metal tube to arrive where the signs are confusing and the food, who knows what you're ordering.

What if I told you, there are places nearby with history, culture, great food, unique stays and plenty to do?

I'm Deann and we're going to do all of that in our backyard.

(upbeat music) We begin our journey in Peru, at this building.

Part of a factory with 20 acres of floor space.

The company started in the back of a general store in the 18 hundreds, with a better idea for a clock mechanism and grew into one of the largest employers in the area, with a product that became a household name.

Big Ben alarm clocks and its smaller brother, Baby Ben.

Both were huge successes and made by the Western Clock Company.

Better known as Westclox.

In 1920 alone, over 800,000 Big Bens were sold, along with over 200,000 Baby Bens.

The secret was advertising.

The name Big Ben was promoted instead of the company and was always referred to as he, to make it appear as a friend or part of the family.

Plus Big Ben never stood still, as it was constantly being updated and improved.

But not all improvements were successful.

In 1955, the company introduced an upscale version named the Clock of Tomorrow.

It was completely redesigned, from the back to the front, but it could not compete with the affordability of the Big Bens.

And the Clock of Tomorrow eventually ended.

This museum is covered, from floor to ceiling, with examples of the various products and time pieces made by Westclox.

The earliest one on display is believed to have been made in 1888.

No one is sure because the data manufactured wasn't stamped on time pieces at this plant until 1900.

Here is a custom piece, made as a souvenir, for the 1893 Colombian exposition in Chicago, which, after a thorough cleaning, still works.

Also on display are several pieces from the 1920s, whose hands and dials were decorated with luminescent paint.

The painting was not done by Wastclox or its employees, but by a company called Radium Dial.

Unfortunately, the mixture caused radiation poisoning in many women because they ingested the paint.

They were taught to wet the tips of their brushes with their mouths, in order to create a fine tip.

During World War II, in order to save metal for the war effort, Westclox and other manufacturers seized production, which created an alarm clock shortage.

In response, the federal government asked for a design that used less metal and where the sales price was not to exceed $1.65.

What Westclox did, was replace the metal case with pressed wood fiber, coated in laquer.

These alarms created a buzzing sound instead of a ring.

How big was the shortage, one Chicago department store advertised that they received a shipment of a thousand of these clocks.

By the next morning, the line of customers stretched around the block.

And now for the numbers.

At its height, the plant employed 4,600 people who produced 35,000 clocks, 10,000 pocket watches and 5,000 wrist watches per day.

All the parts were made and assembled on location.

There was even a fire department with a special engine designed to travel main aisles and fit into the elevators.

More than just a paycheck for workers, Westclox became part of an extended family, whose members were kept informed by the monthly Tick Talk Magazine.

Ruth Spayer is the curator at the Westclox Museum.

Did each department have their own reporter for gossip?

- [Ruth Spayer] Yes.

The Party Line, this one, Big Ben finishing.

Oh, Marion Peccato is on our sick list, Oh, get well, hurry back blondie.

Rita Belleshartsurprised us after Christmas with an extra big sparkle in her eye, from her third finger.

Mickey Rodda left us in December 29th.

She is now Mrs. Pin.

Well, there's a lot of things in this section.

A lot of families, a lot of pictures.

- [Deann] What kind of activities did the company have for the employees?

- Nothing but the best.

This was wonderful here.

We had orchestras, bands, picnics, bowling, golf, baseball, softball.

- I understand they had a pension.

- Yes.

The very first pension program started here in 1924.

And we have an actual copy over on the wall.

- During World War II, we mentioned that clock production stopped but the company made other items.

- We didn't make clocks, we made all military parts.

We did not make bullets.

We didn't use explosion things, but we made the timing devices that went on the bombs and they told them when they went off.

- [Deann] And you have one of those in- - [Ruth Spayer] We have a lot of them.

We have a little bit of everything back there that was made.

- How long did Wastclox make fuses?

- Well, they started in World War I and they went right through Vietnam.

And then the factory was closed in 1980, so we didn't do them anymore.

- I heard NASA even approached Westclox.

- Yes, we were making timers for the Apollo Space Mission and they were very tiny timers and they kept time of whatever they were doing.

And when Apollo 13 went to the moon and they had a trouble, they didn't have to shut all their timers off.

They didn't have to shut everything off that we made because it used perfect a little bit of electricity.

So we stayed on with them.

(laughing) We were happy.

- Thank you, Ruth.

Wow.

Is that the time?

We need to leave Peru and travel to Bloomington, for a vertical trip.

- [Whitney Curtis] Upper Limits is a rock climbing gym pro shop located in the Southwestern portion of Bloomington Illinois.

- [Nikki Lewis] Our main attraction at Upper Limits is our 65 foot silos.

- [Whitney Curtis] And our 110 foot outdoor wall.

Our gym is built in a silo that's over a hundred years old.

So it's been a landmark of the Bloomington area for a really, really long time.

- [Nikki Lewis] Hi, my name's Nikki Lewis and I'm the marketing director at Upper Limits Bloomington.

- [Whitney Curtis] Hi, my name's Whitney Curtis and I am the general manager of Upper Limits Bloomington.

On your first trip to Upper Limits, after you fill out your waiver, we'll take you on a gym tour and give you a complete orientation of our facilities.

During this orientation, we will show you how to use our auto belay systems.

If you are belay certified, you can take a belay test and then you would be able belay in the gym.

We also do lead tests.

If you are lead certified and would like to lead climb in the gym and anybody is free to boulder or use the auto belays, the first visit to the gym.

We have a lot of rope climbing in our gym and that's an unusual feature around the area.

- [Nikki Lewis] Auto belays are when you are hooked up to a machine and it pulls up all the slack as you are climbing and then it lowers you down slowly.

That way you don't need a belay partner.

We have one of the tallest auto belays around that goes 65 feet all the way to the top of the silo.

Top roping requires two people.

The rope is anchored to the ceiling.

You'll have one person who's tied in as the climber.

And then the second person acts as the belayer, who takes up the slack as they're climbing with the be belay device.

- [Whitney Curtis] Lead climbing is a more dangerous form of climbing.

You are not anchored at the ceiling.

You are clipping in as you go, until you get to the anchors and then someone is able to lower you down, once you finish.

- [Nikki Lewis] And the last type of climbing we do here is bouldering.

And bouldering is climbing without equipment.

You can climb up to the top outline, which is the red line around the perimeter of the gym.

It's approximately 15 feet high.

- [Whitney Curtis] We also have an outdoor boulder that people can climb on.

It's unique because they can actually top out.

That means they don't just touch the top.

To finish the problem, they have to actually climb over the top and then they walk down the steps.

- [Nikki Lewis] So the different colored holds show you the different routes that we have set up.

Each route will have its own color.

And the routes will be graded based on their approximate difficulty level.

For top rope lead and the auto belays, we use the Yosemite decimal system.

So each hold of a certain color, on that tag, will be one route.

Say for example, all of the blue holds under the auto belay are routes and all of the green holds are a separate route next to it.

Our bouldering uses the Furman decimal system.

- [Whitney Curtis] Our routes are always changing, here at Upper Limits.

Our bouldering is usually changed out once a month and then randomly different routes are changed out for the top rope and lead routes every month.

It won't be all of the routes being changed every month.

There will be at least a few different routes changed every month.

- [Nikki Lewis] We do a lot of different group programs.

We have a group adventure where you can just come and climb in our gym with your group.

Some people will bring in their coworkers from a business.

We also offer merit badge programs for Boy Scouts that will cover all of the merit badge requirements for their climbing badge.

We do Girl Scout climbing adventures.

We have two different teams currently, the Fundamentals team, which are our beginners and the competitive team, which have been practicing a little bit longer, they're a lot more proficient at climbing and they actually represent Upper Limits at competitions, locally.

For our top rope class, we do offer a belay certification through top rope 101, it's a two hour class and during the course of this class you'll learn how to tie a figure eight a double figure eight, and make sure all of your equipment is set up properly, as both the belayer and the climber.

So you'll learn both portions of it.

And then you will practice all of your new skills.

And the next time you come into the gym you'll take a belay test to prove that you remember how to belay and that you're ready to do it on your own.

Our wave wall is another really unique feature that we use strictly for lead climbing.

(upbeat music) So behind our wave wall, we have what we call the bouldering cave and it kind of spirals up in a core crew behind the wave.

And it gives a lot of great opportunities to practice a little bit harder bouldering skills.

It's great for building your skills, climbing on a slanted surface, without the danger of falling really far.

(upbeat music) Our other unique features are the outdoor wall.

It's 110 feet tall, and you can climb it the first day you come to the gym.

We offer a repelling class, as well, where you can repel off the top of a building and it's about 120 feet.

(upbeat music) - [Whitney Curtis] Rock climbing kind of makes you feel like a kid again.

It's just something fun to do.

It's exercise and you don't even feel like you're exercising.

- [Nikki Lewis] It's really a full body workout.

You'll be so sore the next day and you wouldn't expect it, but it's definitely worth it.

It's a lot of fun and it's a great way to meet people in the community and make friends doing something that does make you feel like a kid again.

- [Whitney Curtis] Yeah, it's so much fun.

And if you're new to a community, it's a great way to make fast friends.

- [Nikki Lewis] It's a great way to get outside later, too with the people you meet while you're climbing and explore some of Illinois excellence of National forests, such as the Shawnee National Forest.

And really just explore Illinois.

(laughing) - [Deann] From Bloomington, we next head to Chillicothe to learn some local history - [Gary Fyke] Chillicothe Historical Society was started by a group of local senior citizens, at the time, in 1971.

And it's been growing ever since, in a continuous operation throughout those years.

My name is Gary Fyke.

I'm a director on the board of directors of the Chillicothe Historical Society and have been a member since 1998.

Generally, our mission statement is to protect, preserve and present and educate our population and our community of the three townships of Chillicothe township, Medina township and Halleck township, as our focus areas and all the related stories and photos and and histories that we can compile, we like to gather those and make them available to our visitors.

We focus on the actual people and the events that they were involved in, as our specific goal.

We do do the collection of the artifacts and archeology items and various contributions that people voluntarily donate to us.

But we like to put the things together in a perspective where we can tell a story that relates the past years to the current day.

That's basically one of our main goals.

We do other things, other than just have things on display.

We do offer research and genealogical assistance to strangers or visitors or members, who have questions about their genealogical history.

We have cemetery records here, for Chillicothe and the surrounding area, so if you want to find out when a person in your family may have been buried in our cemeteries, we likely have that record.

We also have individual histories of families.

We have a photo collection of family histories that have been donated by members and people who just want to preserve their own family history in some external source from their own family.

So that if anybody ever wants to find it, it will be on hand that we can present it to the public.

Our community is a small enough one, that many of the people that would come around here and live here, have been born and raised here.

And we have a number of pieces of equipment from offices that they have now since retired and we now have some of their equipment on display and the people will come in and actually make comments, Oh, I remember that when I was a kid.

And, oh my mom brought me here and they will point to these various objects that we just think they're just objects that are routine, but to them, they have memories attached.

We have an extensive military collection.

It's pretty thorough.

And in fact, we have several where we have a major general in the air force.

(indistinctive) He still comes occasionally to visit and he was born and raised here.

The material is quite extensive.

We have dedicated a room in memory of Johnston McCulley and Johnston McCulley was a prolific story writer and serial writer of fictional characters for nearly 40 years.

And during his time, he created a character which became worldwide and is still currently a worldwide figure, his name was Zorro and he is a mask solo operating type, dual identity superhero.

And we like to refer to him as the original superhero of the characters of today.

Like the character Superman was subsequent to McCulley's creation of Zorro character and the modern day authors that we put together, their superheroes have followed the same formula that McCulley used when he created Zorro, as a champion of justice and the downtrodden.

In the train (indistinctive), you have a great deal of artifacts.

You have timetables, you have books.

We have t-shirts.

We have artifacts from Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad car.

Dining car dinnerware.

We have bells from at least two different steam locomotives on display.

We have an entire station agents set up.

You also have, in the baggage rooms, been converted to a three train lane layout of HO gauge trains.

We do also have a caboose, which in 1942, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe caboose, that was rehabbed in 1967.

And it's one of the few, they got rid of many of them.

There are hardly any of those and it's called a way car, is actually it's terminology, but everybody calls them cabooses.

But it's a model CE-1, made by Atchison, Topeka and was donated to the railroad museum and our museum through the brother of one of our members who was, at one time, Western division, chief of the Atchison, Topeka in Santa Fe, when it was still operating in Chillcothe.

- [Deann] From Chillicothe, we head to Tiskilwa, to visit alpacas.

- I'm Bob Sash, the owner of Tiskilwa Farms, Alpacas.

We bought this farm and we ended up having horses and cattle and sheep and goats and everything else.

And I came across alpacas in the New York Times, actually.

And after reading the article and visiting a farm I had my first two alpacas by the end of the year.

About six months later, we had 42, that was back in 1999.

We've been doing this about 21 years now.

And we've been growing the herd.

We have about 150 alpacas now.

We have 16 herds sires, breeding new bloodlines into the herd.

So we selectively pick herd sires with individual dams to produce exactly what we're looking for with particular offspring.

The industry is very, very organized.

They do a wonderful job of maintaining all the records.

They keep all the show records, all the fleece records, all the genetic records, so that anytime you want to check up any animal in the country, you can go on their website and look it up and find all this information about it.

They started recording every animal when it came in from Peru.

So every animal in the U.S. has got history from the time it got to the U.S..

Some of them go back eight generations.

There are two breeds of alpacas.

One is called a Suri.

A Suri alpaca is slenderer, taller and has a fleece that hangs down, in kind of a dreadlock sort of pattern.

And then the other type is Huacaya.

And the Huacaya is the big fluffy alpaca that you probably think of, when you think of an alpaca, kind of looks like a teddy bear in the spring when it's all fleeced out.

We have Huacayas.

The fleece is the commercial product that you get from an alpaca.

It produces luxury clothing.

As a consequence, people raise large numbers of them to harvest the fleece and then make product out of it.

Clothing, yarns, that sort of thing.

We take our animals to shows to prove the quality of the fleece, by an independent judge and depending on how they place, that impacts the value of the individual animals.

If you've ever watched the Westminster Dog Show, that's almost exactly what an alpaca show is like.

You lead the alpaca into the show ring, the judge watches how it walks and then comes up to it, checks its body, checks its teeth, checks its ears and its tail.

That's the overall confirmation of the alpaca.

And then secondly, half of the weighting of the judging goes to the fleece.

And the judge is looking for length.

They want to have a long fiber.

They want to have density.

They want to have a lot of fiber on the animal.

And they want to see a crimp style, waviness to the fleece and all those characteristics go to the production, that they want to have an animal that's going to produce a lot of fleece and is gonna produce a fleece that will make clothing well and the crimp style is what holds that together.

And so they're looking for all those characteristics with the mind of the ultimate clothing product.

We have tours almost every day.

We bring people through, walk them through the pastures, let them get up close and touch the animals.

They love to be fed.

So we walk around with a bucket of pellets and let people fill their hands and feed the animals directly.

They're very gentle animals, so even with never having been exposed to them, people can just walk into the pens and mingle with the alpacas and pet them and feed them.

They definitely want to be fed.

We have a website it's www.Illinoisalpacas.com.

They're just a very gentle animal that most anyone can have in their backyard.

It doesn't take much land to keep an alpaca.

The normal, about, is 10 animals to an acre and most people can handle an acre.

Particularly in our area, here in the central Illinois.

So a lot of people just buy them for backyard pets and they have a unique pet that they can have and take care of.

And they're relatively inexpensive to take care of.

They eat grass hay and they eat grass in the pastures in the summer.

So they're relatively easy to take care of too.

(upbeat music) - [Deann] From Tiskilwa, let's return to the Peru La Salle area.

Back there is the old Westclox Museum and factory.

And just a few minutes away is a man made waterway that fueled the growth of both La Salle and Peru.

And it was either the start or the end, depending on which way you traveled, of the Illinois Michigan canal.

Since the Illinois river was unnavigable, from this point North, a canal was dug, which allowed Chicago to be connected to the Mississippi river.

And from that, to new Orleans.

In 1848, before the arrival of railroads, it was a boom for Midwest agriculture.

Back there would be a parking lot of steamboats, unloading and waiting for cargo or passengers.

This was the first lock on the journey.

It is also the only restored lock on the canal.

From here, it's 96 miles to the end in Lockport with 15 locks handling a total elevation change of 10 feet.

The dimension of those locks dictated the size of the boats, which were 17 and a half by a hundred feet.

And they were slow.

Being pulled by a mule.

Today, visitors can take a short ride on the canal, while learning about its history on a replica boat that departs from the La Salle lock.

And I can't think of a better way to end our journey than where so many others began.

(camera clicking) (upbeat music)