While I was still home with Mom, Bill drove to Sedalia, Missouri for the 58th Escapade, an annual RV rally put on by the Escapee’s club. Thousands of RV’ers gather together for several days of educational seminars and festivities. This was one stop I was not very excited about but Bill is big on research and self-education so I agreed. Bill had mapped out a seminar schedule for us to attend and I was pretty happy that I got to miss most of it. The 2 seminars that I did attend met my expectations – boring. We are both so introverted we skipped all of the festivities like the talent night and ice cream on the lawn so the festivities were also a bust (I did see a magic show by Reza before Dessa arrived which was pretty good). The RV crowd consists of mostly older retired folks…I know I am one of them, but I don’t feel like I fit that profile (maybe not the full stereotype but we definitely fit the description – old retired folks that live in RV’s). The only highlight was the dinner we had with an ex-colleague of Bill’s from Cisco after he picked me up at the airport in Kansas.
Chicago’s Bean
I had never been to our next stop, Chicago. The day after we arrived, we had tickets to Taylor Swift at Soldier Field. We were actually staying 40 miles away in Portage, Indiana because there are no RV parks close to Chicago (or most other large cities for that matter). We debated how to get downtown, take the train or drive the truck. If we took the train, we were likely to go through some of the undesirable parts of town late at night, and if we took the truck, we always struggle to find parking. The truck is an F350 dually, eight feet wide and twenty-one feet long. It does not fit in most garages, so we have to find surface parking everywhere we go. It is often a stressful situation. We opted for the truck, safety over stress, and went into town around noon where we found a valet that gave us a street spot for twenty bucks. This was a good deal since prepaid parking at the event was $55. Our bicycles are always in the bed of the truck, so we rode them up and down the waterfront, which was really awesome. I love the way so many of the tourist attractions are along that one stretch of Lake Shore Drive, with the city parks between them. It was cloudy and gray when we started out, and was actually cold enough that I was wishing I had a scarf. We went to Giordano’s for lunch and had great pizza, even though it wasn’t the Chicago deep dish style. It warmed up and the sun came out after lunch and we enjoyed riding our bikes and stopping for pictures. There was a free Gospel Music Festival going on in Millennium Park that was cool, and before we knew it, we had to get back to Soldier Field for the concert.
Taylor Swift at Soldier Field
Taylor Swift’s Reputation show was great, and the warm up was Camilla Cabello known for “Havana”. I know it probably seems odd that we would go to see her, but we like a wide variety of concerts, especially the ones where we know almost every song, and TS fits that type. She is a far cry from the squeaky-clean image she once had, and puts on a first-rate show. Every person that attended the two sold out shows got a led bracelet to wear during the show. The cool part was that they lit up in synchronized colors and waves across the stadium which was a really great effect. About 90 minutes into the show, it started to rain, but she never left the stage, playing on for at least another half hour, singing, dancing in high heels, and playing the piano. Excellent show!
Our campground (actually a true Trailer Park this time) was very close to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, so we spent an afternoon hiking the Miller Woods Trail. It was a storybook trail with beautiful wildflowers and a forest floor covered in ferns. There was a wide variety of topography in the park including sand dunes, a few small lakes, beaver dams, and dragonflies by the thousands. It was a lovely hike. If we had another day in the area we would have gone back to climb the dunes, but we’ll have to save that for another time.
On our second trip into town we hopped on our bikes again and went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which was free. I have never seen a free zoo, and it was really nice, with a good selection of animals in pretty nice enclosures and a lot of beautiful flowers. I am not used to seeing flowers in full bloom that are not being scorched by the heat every day. They are so pretty they don’t even look real. They had a baby hippo that was in a pool, and we got some video of him playing with some kids through the glass. After the zoo, we biked over to the Navy Pier, also in the Lake Shore Drive area, and took a stroll around. In the middle of the day it wasn’t very impressive but I think on a Friday night it would have been quite different given the bars and restaurants. Chicago lived up to its name that day as it was super windy with a biting wind coming in off Lake Michigan. We went to Lou Malnati’s for lunch, to make sure we had some true deep dish pizza and it was excellent. I really fell in love with Chicago but I definitely wouldn’t want to be here in winter.
Next up was Shipshewana, Indiana, in the heart of Amish country. Bill wanted to stop here specifically so we could do the factory tour at Grand Design, the manufacturer of our Momentum fifth wheel. The company has only been around since 2011 but has quickly built a great reputation for quality. Their assembly line is 100% manual and the labor force are almost all Amish. Our tour guide described them as honest, hard-working, and uncomplaining. They start at 4am, so they can get off early enough to work their farms and other businesses (and avoid the heat of the day on the factory line). They really do focus on quality and constant improvement. We saw several nice changes (that I wish we could have) to the Momentum design that they have incorporated in the four years since we bought ours.
It was so cool seeing all the different Amish conveyances, most pulled by horses, everywhere we went. There were large and small buggies, and wagons, and black boxes, some even with windshields and windows, and the stores had hitching post parking areas. The women were in homespun dresses with bonnets and the men all had long beards and black hats. You won’t be surprised to hear our first stop was a bakery, where we bought the most delicious cream filled rolls covered with cinnamon sugar and a raspberry pastry that was to die for. We walked in the shop, that was out in the middle of nowhere, and said hello to the three women. They barely responded, and a young man came out from the back to wait on us. Hmmm, are women not allowed to transact business?
To off-set the factory tour that he knew I would only be marginally interested in, Bill discovered something in the area that would be right up my alley – quilt gardens. Spread across Elkhart county over two dozen businesses create gardens in approved patchwork quilt patterns. Unfortunately, we were visiting too early and the gardens had just been planted, so they were far from being at their peak readiness (but I still get credit for trying, don’t I?). One night we went to a car show held at Das Dutchman Essenhaus, which we were told was one of the areas must do restaurants, serving family style chicken dinners. It was really not very good, in spite of the 4.5 stars on Google reviews (the restaurant that is. The Car show was quite large with some beautiful vehicles). We had a couple of rainy days so we did not get to see as much of the Amish way of life as we would have liked, but it was beautiful countryside. The farms that lined every road were so lush and green, with every building and farm house in perfect order, and immaculately groomed. Sunday morning, it was time to move on and we wanted to get more pastries from the above-mentioned bakery, Country Lane Bakery. We were disappointed to find they were closed Sundays and Mondays. Damn! I guess we will have to come back.
A slight detour on our way to visit Bill’s family in Kitchener, took us to Frankenmuth – Michigan’s Little Bavaria. It is the home of the biggest Christmas store in the world, Bronner’s, where you will find 45,000 square feet of everything Christmas. Outside the store were lots of giant Christmas scenes, and of course a 20ft Santa, as well as an attached hotel and what appeared to be an amusement park. The Bavarian Village was a tiny tourist trap, also known for chicken dinners, but we knew better than to fall for that again. We found some lunch and then stumbled across SugarHigh Bakery, a winner of Cupcake Wars. Jackpot! In spite of all the yummy flavors, we only bought one each, it must have been a fat day.
Ferguson Bayou
We only had one day, but decided we could squeeze in a hike at the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, on the Ferguson Bayou Trail, before the visit to Bronner’s. The hike was awesome, at one point the trees were shedding so many white tufts, it seemed like it was snowing. The bayou was the best part, it was so still, every tree was perfectly reflected in the water. We walked along marshes to what was called the Grefe Tower, to find it was only five steps up to a viewing platform. The refuge was created primarily because it is a resting place for migrating Canada Geese and there were lots of birds that were mostly too far away for our cameras (successful birding requires more patience that we typically have and very expensive/heavy camera lenses which I don’t want to buy or carry). We also spotted muskrat, deer and a raccoon that really should have been sleeping, not wandering around.
Next we cross the border into Canada, and stop near Kitchener, for a two week visit with Bill’s family. More on that later…
See our photos and videos here.
