Small Towns and Warm Weather

Arriving in Hopkins, Michigan on Friday, the 28th of June, we settled into Hidden Ridge RV Resort. Located just a few miles south of Grand Rapids, and an hour or so from the Lake Michigan shore, it seems like a wonderful place to relax for a few days. This park is truly a resort, with paved roads, concrete site pads, and gated entry. The main activity of any given evening is to cruise the park in a tricked out golf cart! Since we weren't in the golf cart mood, we settled for a quiet soda in the shade.

Since it doesn't get dark until well after 9 pm these days, we drove into the farming community of Hopkins for a look around. There are a number of well kept older homes in this small town.

On Saturday, we ventured northwest into the towns of Holland and Zeeland. This area was obviously settled by the Dutch back in the day, and we enjoyed some of the culture. It's mostly tourist related these days, but there is an authentic Dutch windmill operating at Windmill Island Gardens.

Downtown Holland is much as you would expect: shops and restaurants as far as you can see. It was nevertheless enjoyable to walk a few blocks and do some window shopping and people watching.

Tucked away in a small park just off the main street of town is a bronze sculpture showing a group of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America. Very nice!

Just north of Holland, the small community of Zeeland called to us. The Dutch heritage abounds, with name like Vander Plow and Van der Linden on storefronts and road signs. It's a quaint little town.

Back in Holland, we found a car show that was raising money in support of the Fight Against Cancer. Lowes Home Improvement had donated dozens of blue buckets to collect donations. There were many very well done cars on display, including this bright '28 Ford.

Thinking of a different RV experience, Donna?

We headed just a bit west to Saugatuck, MI, to gawk at the yachts and perhaps rub elbows with the upper crust. We first stopped at the Singapore Yacht Club. Why Singapore? There was, once upon a time, a town near Saugatuck named Singapore. Sounds like they might be brothers....It was a thriving sea (lake) port, shipping fish and timber to Chicago. When the lumber ran out, and the fishing declined, Singapore was abandoned. Some parts of the town are still visible when the wind moves the sand around, but most is lost under the beach. Saugatuck has successfully morphed into a destination however, and today it thrives on tourism.

No further description requires....

I needed a larger lens to capture this vessel.

Due to extremely high water levels and very warm temperatures, algae is blooming everywhere it seems. We talked to a gentleman on the fantail of one of the yachts who said that in more than 10 years, he has not seen such a plentiful "crop" of algae.

As in an RV Resort, the thing to do is parade your toys for all to see. And a spectacular parade it was.

The channel is narrow at this point in Saugatuck, and a chain-driven ferry crosses. Powered by a young man turning a crank, the ferry boat follows a chain. Sure, it's slow, but you should see his arms!

Today, Sunday the 30th, we ventured west and south, wanting to get a glimpse of Lake Michigan. Our GPS went a little crazy and sent us down some rather obscure country roads.....

After awhile we found South Haven, Michigan. This is a great little town for beach activities, so as a result we were unable to find a parking place anywhere near the beach, and when we drove by it, we saw that we would have been hard pressed to find enough empty sand to sit down on!

Taking the long way home through Paw Paw, we stopped for a late lunch at our favorite Michigan restaurant, the 120 Taphouse and Bistro. The menu is awesome, with dishes that would be well received in metropolitan restaurants. Their signature appetizer is a "Doobie", basically an egg roll with a variety of fillings. We sampled the Three Cheese Doobie and the Irish Doobie, with a filling of Corned Beef and Sauerkraut. Next, a Paella served in a cast iron skillet and an order of garlic and butter steamed mussels was enough to stuff us, but we had to finish it all off with a gluten free Lava Cake with whipped cream. No pictures, please.

OK, enough with the food! We have one more day to enjoy here at Hidden Ridge, then it's off to Charlotte, Michigan, to have the company that built the motorhome chassis do some service work on that part of our home. Just a minor, but necessary, maintenance item. We'll spend July 4th in Charlotte, visiting with Dave and Toni, a couple that we met at the Service Center in Nappanee. Then it's north again, toward the wilds of the UP.

Stay with us!

From One Place to Another. With a Little Fun in Between.

Our last night in Nappanee, Indiana, included a mixture of rain, temperature, and humidity. We were, of course, parked next to the paint building at Newmar, so the view wasn't spectacular, but just as the sun set a brief rain shower literally blew through, leaving us with a nice double rainbow! What a fitting end to a successful service visit at the factory where Nessie was born!

We left Nappanee on Wednesday, the 26th and traveled all of 61 miles to Crosspoint Cummins in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This Cummins engine dealer has a full service facility and runs two shifts maintaining Cummins diesel engines in everything from generators to school busses and heavy equipment. We've visited them in the past and needed some routine maintenance, so we stopped by. They have a handful of parking slots with electrical outlets for people like us who need to stay overnight in our motorhomes.

And on the other side, we had a view of the Kenworth truck dealer, who managed to keep three shifts of techs busy!

John, the Cummins motorhome tech, took our motorhome first thing on Thursday to service the engine, grease the chassis and running gear, and service the generator. I had mentioned to Crosspoint that I felt that the engine power was not quite right, so they plugged a specialized computer into the coach and John and I drove a few miles around the city checking various parameters. He indicated that the engine seemed to be operating well, but that the shift points in the Allison transmission were not quite right. Hmmm. OK.

While John was working on Nessie, Donna and Sasha and I took a drive around the local area. We soon found ourselves in the Amish community of Grabill where the hardware store, feed and grain store, and the post office were all in one building!

Just a mile or so out of town, an Amish gathering (wedding? birthday?) brought out all the horses and buggies a person could imagine, with men in pristine black trousers, starched white shirts with black vests, and woven hats. The ladies were crisp and clean and the children were scrubbed till their faces fairly shone in the sunlight!

Continuing our day trip, we happened into the town of Auburn, Indiana. In this little thought of town in mid state, the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Company produced some of the finest automobiles of the golden age of vehicles. The factory was closed and shuttered years ago, but has been revived as a museum and tribute to these prestigious cars.

The first floor showroom has been refurbished to better than new condition while retaining all of the original flooring and decorations.

The mind boggles at the incredible display of automobiles:

1930 Duisenberg Model J convertible. 420 cubic inch straight eight cylinder engine. 265 horsepower at 4,200 rpm. Price when new: $14,750.

1932 Cord:

1937 Cord 812 Coupe: Only three hardtop coupes were made in 1936-1937, and only one was like this one. Commissioned by Robert Stranahan, Sr., president and co-founder of Champion Sparkplugs,  this vehicle had many unique features, including Auburn headlights, a padded leather top, an Auburn hood ornament, and Lasalle vent ports on the sides of the hood. It developed 175 horsepower from a supercharged Lycoming V-8 engine and cost $3,500 when new.

1936 Cord 810: Built to be exhibited at the 1936 automobile show, this car was designed, tested, and 100 vehicles were ready to go in just over 7 months. Shirley Temple starred in "Dimples and Stowaway" that year and 38% of American families had annual incomes under $1,000.

This restored 1934 Duisenberg Model J Dual-Cowl Phaeton was designed completely within Duesenbergs in house styling studio and contracted out to LaGrande Coachbuilders. Duesenberg Inc.'s in house stylist Gordon Buehrig was a leader in proportional styling. Notice the dual windshields, protecting passengers from the wind as well as the driver.

In 1927, the famous designer Henry Earl joined General Motors as their director of Art and Color Department. His first Cadillac, in 1928, added a number of dashboard and instrument panel changes as well as a larger V-8 engine to compete with Packard in the eight-cylinder sales race. This 341 cubic inch V-8 engine only developed 90 horsepower. When President Franklin Roosevelt needed a secure ride to Washington to make his speech following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Government used an armored 1928 Cadillac 341 confiscated from Al Capone.

The 1935 Auburn 851 Boattail came with a plaque certifying that it had been road tested to over 100 miles per hour. It was a beautiful social statement designed by Gordon Buehrig. Cost when new? $2,245.

This 1948 Tasco is the result of a group of investors wanting to build an American sports car for competition at Watkins Glen racetrack in New York. Gordon Buehrig was part of the group. This single prototype vehicle was the first in the world with a T-top roof, an idea that Buehrig patented. He later sued General Motors when the 1968 Corvette came out with a T-top roof. The name Tasco stands for The American Sports Car Company.

Cord was the first production automobile to have front wheel drive, a concept that architect Frank Lloyd Wright believed in. He owned several, including this 1930 Cord L-29.

Amelia Earhart was presented with this Cord 812 Phaeton by her husband in 1937. She was unable to enjoy the Cord as she was lost in the Pacific on July 2, 1937.

Featuring cars of jewel-like precision, the Indianapolis based Stutz became best know for it's Bearcat, but the Stutz Speedway Four was innovative in its own right in the years after WW1. This 1923 model features a huge 365 cubic inch, four cylinder engine that developed 88 horsepower, which propelled the 4,130 pound car to speeds over 80 miles-per-hour.

The designs of the day, long hoods and short back ends allowed Cord to perfect it's front wheel design. The engine was placed at the back of the front-drive gearbox.

In the so-called Classic Era, 1925 to 1948, one-of-a-kind custom passenger compartments were all the rage among the elite of the country. Coach builders had evolved from the extravagant carriage builders of the 19th century, and were expert at forming custom bodies out of 14 gauge aluminum. Using hand tools and wood frames, the bodies were meticulously created by highly skilled workers, most often for a Cord chassis.

I did not see any identifying signage for this spectacular vehicle, but it fairly shouts "Elegance".

Wow! How do you follow that? With another museum, of course! In the same town, eight other museums display and educate. The National Auto and Truck Museum, the Hoosier Air Museum, Military Interactive Exhibits, the Historical Railroad Museum, and the Early Ford V-8 Museum are just a few. I wish we had more time!

Newmar Week Two

Last Sunday found us on the road to Merrillville, Indiana, for a bit of shopping at a large mall. Merrillville is about 75 miles from our location in Nappanee and just a few miles south of Gary, Indiana, but it was the closest location for a particular store we were looking for. You see, a good friend turned me on to Sketchers shoes a few years ago, and now it's my go-to brand. It was time to get re-shod, so off we went. A very nice lady helped us and after an hour we were back on the road home. A long way to go? Absolutely. Comfortable shoes? Absolutely.

On the way home we stopped for lunch in the town of Valparaiso, IN, at the Industrial Revolution. This restaurant is themed in a period when industrial expansion and invention was at its height. This view adapts the iconic photo of workmen having lunch sitting on an I-Beam during the construction of a skyscraper in New York.

Of course it was cloudy and raining most of the day, but some breaks gradually appeared.

On Monday, our coach was scheduled for a windshield replacement, which required that we spend the night out of the motorhome so that the adhesive/sealant could bond properly. Newmar kindly comped us a room at the Oakwood Resort in Syracuse, IN, about a half hour east of Nappanee along the shore of Lake Wawasee. The lake is huge, over four square miles in area, but is roughly twenty one feet deep, so it is an extraordinarily nice place for boater, water skiers, and swimmers. It is the largest natural lake in Indiana. Oakwood Resort has a private dock, providing access to the hotel restaurant from the water.

The sprawling resort can accommodate hundreds of guests and hotel property spreads over several acres, with event building, outdoor performance sections, and playgrounds. We stayed in room 103, on the ground floor on the lakeside with a nice view of the lake.

The clouds rolled in and the clouds rolled out! Almost every day this week we experienced a midwest storm.

Wednesday and Thursday nights were spent back at Oakwood Resort. We were able to stay in Nessie2 on Tuesday night, and it felt really good! While the hotel room we occupied on Monday night was very nice, the smaller queen bed just wasn't comfortable for all of us....you know...it's all about the dog.

This time we had a room on the third floor with a king-size bed. Sasha approved!

It's Springtime in the Midwest! We've seen dozens of new colts just learning how to navigate on those long, long legs!

This young lady was feeling a bit frisky!

Until she got tired!

Mr. Farmer walked around the corner of his barn and another family joined the party!

We checked out of Oakwood on Friday, a bright, shiny day on Lake Wawasee.

We arrived at the Newmar Service building Friday afternoon to rescue the motorhome. While that went well, we found that the technicians had found a couple of additional issues that needed to be addressed. One thing involved the system that uses diesel fuel to heat the coach....there was a small fuel leak. Not a good thing to have a few inches away from a flame! Another repair changed the nuts and bolts that attach the awnings to a method that is more secure. Evidently an awning came off a coach.....another not so good thing to happen!

So, we were scheduled to be done this week, but need to wait for the part for the heating system, so we will be here a couple of more days. The techs are not all Amish, but they all seem to have a dedication to the performance of a good job. We've gotten to know several over the years, and particularly this long visit, and have never had a distasteful experience. The new facility is first rate and we notice that Newmar is constructing new buildings at other locations on their campus. It's good to know that our dollars are being used wisely!

Since we need to stay a little longer, another trip to Shipshewanna was in order. Along with the purchase of more meat and cheese at our favorite store, we stopped for lunch at the Blue Gate Restaurant and Bakery. As you probably know, they have an Amish themed theater production most nights, at which you can combine an all you can eat dinner. Let's see....all you can eat, then sit in a comfortable chair in the dark......I'm thinking ZZZZZZZ/

We didn't see the theater production, but it has received rave reviews. We settled for their famous Fried Chicken dinner (not all you can eat!). Four pieces of chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing with gravy, hush puppies and green beans.....gulp. We brought home more than we ate!

Some construction in the town of Goshen sent us off into the countryside on a road we've never traveled before. Reminded us of Oak Avenue Plantation in Louisiana!

The next step at Camp Newmar is to wrap up the last few things on Monday. A move to the less desirable "overflow" area on Tuesday will free up a site in the full hookup area for someone whose coach is in Service, and then we're outta here on Wednesday! Still have a couple of maintenance things to address: a stop at the Cummins engine dealer in Ft Wayne, IN, will get the oil changed, and then it's north into Michigan next week.

Have a good week!