Middle of Nowhere?

We picked up Nessie at Hill Truck Sales in Elkhart Thursday afternoon and drove about a mile to the Elkhart RV Campground on CR4. This is a nice campground that caters to people doing the Elkhart RV thing.  The sites are large and grassy, with good utility connections and good gravel access roads. We were put in site 116, which was perfect, except for the huge tree just to the south that blocked our satellite tv reception. Oh, bother! Donna and I actually had to talk to each other! After a couple of long walks around the campground, Sasha had quieted down after her "go to the car" prison sentence, so we took the opportunity to go to dinner at Cappies North Side Restaurant. This is a local bar/grill with excellent reviews from the local people. One of the specialties of the house was Smelt. Battered and fried, Donna pronounced it "OK", but won't put it high on the list for next time: too fishy!

I opted for the Daily Special: Mexican Burrito……I've not had any other kind, but…..
It didn't merit a picture.

Friday morning it was on the Indiana Toll Road heading east. For those of you in the West, consider that this was the beginning of a new experience for us.

Considering that Nessie, including mirrors, is just shy of 10 feet wide, and the toll lanes are 12 feet wide, you can understand my concern as I threaded through the concrete barriers. The booth above was a small one where we were sent to the right side, giving us a bit more room. Several of the Toll Plazas have six or more booths and a lot of traffic, so the congestion was more intense.

A few miles down the road:

After 50-odd miles and $17, we left Indiana and continued into Ohio. There's a long stretch of I80/90, the Toll Road, that shall remain forever forgotten along in here. Our GPS decided to have a stroke, and took us off I80 south of Toledo, Ohio, and sent us north to the Toledo Zoo. I'm not sure why, but it appears to be a large and wonderful zoo, and we waved as we passed by! We got on I75 south somewhere in Toledo, and that took us back to the Toll Road, where we should have been to begin with. An hour ago.

We stopped for lunch at a Travel Plaza so that we wouldn't have to exit the Toll Road again, and checked our maps. Ok, we've got it…..I80 to 14 to…..Then I noticed that a few miles east of the recommended turn is the town of Lordstown, Ohio. GM fans will remember that the Lordstown Assembly plant is one of GM's largest, and has been in operation since 1966. We decided to at least drive by.

Now building the Chevy Cruze, one of the most popular vehicles in the world, this plant is a city all to itself.















It is essentially self contained, with a large solar array on the south side of the plant.

On the East side of the plant is the parking lot/truck loading area. Thousands (it seems) of new cars are waiting to be delivered!

The assembly plant has two dedicated offramp/toll plaza's, one on the east side, and one on the west, probably for the large amount of trucks that go through here. On the back side is a railroad track complex with over 30 sidings where cars are loaded. With over 6 million feet under roof, the plant is separated into the Assembly, Metal Center, and Paint Shop. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles have been produced here, from the Caprice, Impala, and Bel Air of the '60's through the Vegas and Vans of the 70's, and even a hundred thousand Buicks and Oldsmobiles during the late '70's! Pontiacs and Chevrolets were produced through the '90's and into the early 2000's, and the Cruze became the only vehicle produced here in 2011. What a facility!

Eighteen miles due south of Lordstown in Salem, OH, we found a KOA campground. True to KOA form, there are lots of things for kids to do, and lots of grass to do it on. There's even a small private catch and release lake.

Nessie fit very nicely into space DP02!

The evening clouds were beautiful!

And sunset…..

Our main reason for coming to Salem was the Salem Car Cruise. An event held every year for charity, it's a great show, with two main streets in town blocked off for the evening cruise. However, true to the luck we've been having this year, the cruise has been rained out for today. The cruise started on Thursday evening, with music and food, and cars, and continues through Sunday, so we're hopefully the folks will get in some more car time tomorrow. But for now, our tour through town left us with only two pix:

A Chevy not set up for rain,

and a local Punkin' Chunker:

Heading back to camp, we took a detour to the villages of Lisbon (where American Standard plumbing products are manufactured), and Winona, Ohio. Along the way we happened on the Teegarden-Centennial Covered Bridge over a beautiful, if almost overflowing, stream.

The countryside is beautiful here, with overgrown lanes and quiet country roads.

So, yes, it has rained 12 of the last 13 days hereabouts. The ground is saturated, the creeks are overflowing, and the forecast is for more rain as the remnants of Tropical Depression Bill wander through. This is a nice change for us westerners, but the locals would like to see a bit of sunshine!

We'll wrap up Ohio and head through Pennsylvania tomorrow toward our Nations' Capitol. The weather is likely to be damp still, but the temperature is supposed to be in the mid nineties. Oh, boy, here we go…..