Canada Day Weekend

For the Canada Day long weekend we settled into the small resort town of Grand Bend on Lake Huron and had the pleasure of attending one of the best musical/comedies that we have seen. 'Sorry! I'm Canadian' was put on in a converted barn that sat 600 people and featured music and comedy from each province across the country. Even a couple of days later we were repeating some of the jokes to each other and chuckling!

Border crossing to Ontario

We drove north through Michigan and entered Canada at Sarnia, and on to London for a great evening reunion with Doug and Susan.
Doug went to school with Bill many years ago at the Lake of Two mountains High School. We had a wonderful chance to have dinner, meet Susan for the first time, and tell stories about ancient times! Doug was off early the following morning on a 2 week motorcycle adventure.

RV Museum

A number of large RV manufacturers have plants in this area. This has given rise to the establishment of an excellent RV Museum with well maintained RV's dating back to 1919.

Nappanee - Amish people

Of interest in Nappanee are the Amish people, they lead a very strict traditional lifestyle from the mid 1800’s. They use horse and carriage or bicycles for transportation and are dressed in 18^th century clothing. They don’t use electricity or power tools on their farms. In the surrounding area many of North America’s motor homes, trailers and 5^th wheels are manufactured

Newmar factory, Nappanee Indiana

From Chicago a one day trip saw us driving south of Lake Michigan and into Nappanee, Indiana the small Amish town where our motor home was built. We had been planning and looking forward to a tour of the Newmar factory to see how all the ‘bits and pieces’ go together. The tour was especially good as the factory was on a 3 week summer shutdown and with only a skeleton staff, otherwise we would have been confined behind a yellow line and the noise would have been so loud we would not have heard our guide. We were able to peek and prod around and even climb into some of the units as they stood/moved through 52 stations on the assembly line. It all starts with a frame, engine and wheels and drives out the other end a complete unit ready for the highway. On average a motor home takes 13 days to complete.

Newmar Factory - 2

The floor, walls and some of the interior are being added to the frame. Much of the wiring has been installed. Insulation is going on in the last picture of this group.

To move the unit along the assembly line the skids that the wheels are sitting on have compressed air added to them and the whole unit can be pushed with one hand. Truly riding on 'air'.

Newmar Factory - 3

The outer fiberglass skin, the roof and the windshield and nose cone are being added to the unit. It is starting to look more like a motor home.

The bottom photo is showing the new horizontally opening storage doors.

Newmar Factory -4

Most of the interior is now in place with the last major units being the slides to be installed before the motor home goes to the painting shop. Final exterior detailing is completed after the paint shop.

Touring Chicago

......It's a sunny Saturday as we drive into downtown Chicago and visit the 'Lakeshore', All three of us are most impressed with the towering new apartment buildings, the beaches and the beautiful marinas. Our only problems are the crowds as we can't find a parking spot to allow us to get out and do some walking. A coffee shop and parking in the 'loop' district of downtown finally comes to our rescue. A final visit with Terry and our goodbyes before we head to the airport and Ruth's flight home to Phoenix.

Touring Chicago

Toured Ruth and Chuck's old 'stomping' grounds in Lombard and Berwyn, saw their apartments and home that they lived in before moving to Sun City AZ. Drove to Mount Emblem Cemetery to visit Chuck's, Uncle Bill's and Aunt Ruth's graves. We then returned to Ki's Restaurant for a delicious Prime Rib dinner.

Terry loves his animals and has a barnyard view from the restaurant. Black and white sheep, peacocks, ducks and geese. We met Terry's daughter Emily who works at the restaurant.

Chicago Visit

Ruth arrived at O'Hare Airport about noon today from Phoenix. We made our way over to her good friends restaurant for a delicious lunch. Terry the owner of Ki's Steak and Seafood was so surprised and pleased to see Ruth.

Camping Locations

For the record we have used only 3 RV campsites, but have availed ourselves overnight stays at truck stops (Flying J sites), Wal-Mart’s and friendly parking lots.

Wal-Mart extends a welcome to RV units as long as they are self contained. We always try to find a discrete location on their lot, but at times we have seen up to 30 units parked overnight.

The Flying J fuel and truck stops have large parking lots and we were frequently lined up with 150 or more semi's that are parked for a few hours or overnight. The truckers were always a friendly source for road and weather conditions. The Flying J's have specific areas for RV's not only providing fuel but also fresh water and dump sites for our gray and black water. This is definitely one stop service!

Arriving in Chicago

Just after lunch today we arrived at our RV Park on the SW of Chicago. It is a beautiful spot with sandy beaches and a lake for boating and fishing. The camp is setup, Dutchess and Granny are washed from head to toe, tonight we can BBQ…life is good!

East across the plains

From the ‘Bad Lands’ of South Dakota we descend to the plains, long distances, few towns or population and endlessly straight roads, that is until we got about half way through Iowa and our planned Interstate Highway 90 was closed due to flooding. I’m sure you have heard of this flooding disaster, 36,000 people flooded out, interstate highways closed, Amtrak Railway has canceled trains heading west and north out of Chicago. Millions of acres of crops lost to flooding. We detoured north then crossed the Mississippi River and headed back south to our original destination, about a 150 km detour.

Touring the Black Hills of South Dakota

The weather was perfect and later that day we drove Granny through the surrounding park on nearly impossible roads, three corkscrew bridges looping back on themselves and small ‘one way’ carved rock tunnels. The corkscrew bridges were designed to give height to reach the rock tunnels. A road we definitely could not take 'Dutchess' through and at times wanted to suck in the sides of 'Granny'. During this drive we came out on flat moorland and encountered these 'mooching' wild donkeys.

Black Hills Continued