June 29, 2008

Today we are in Mitchell, South Dakota. We stopped here to see the Corn Palace. There have been three Corn Palace buildings. The first was built in 1892, the second was built in 1905 and the final Corn Palace was built in 1921. Twelve different colors of corn are grown locally and used in the designs on the outside and inside of the building.

This year’s theme of decoration is “Everyday Heroes 2008”.

Inside is a 3000-seat auditorium that is used for basketball games, graduations, proms and stage shows. Oscar Howe, the late Sioux artist and South Dakota artist laureate, created the permanent interior murals.

It is fascinating what can be done with different colors of corn.

First the designer creates the mural then transfers it to black building paper with the different colors notated. Then the ears are sawed in half and nailed flat side to the building with nail guns and hammers. Rye, Sour Dock, Grasses and Milo are use in the trim work of the designs. The building is redone each year starting in the summer replacing the grasses and later the corn at a cost of about $130,000.00.

Next we went to the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village National Historic landmark. We visited the Thomsen Center Archeodome where we saw archeological digs of a village from 1000 years ago.

We had a full and very interesting day during our first day in South Dakota.

June 27,2008

We continued our journey west today to Welcome, Minnesota. The population of this friendly city is 721. We took a leisurely walk around town and found a couple parks and a water fountain built in 1914 for people and horses.





Lately, we have seen lots of wind generators along the way and today we had the opportunity to talk with two men from Texas who work on them. These generators stand 300 feet tall and the blades are 150 feet long. This one is used to power two ethanol refineries in the area.

This is at the base looking up to the top 300 foot above. The wire coming from the top at the rear is attached to a winch and is used to lift tools to the top and back down again.

If you look closely at the center of the propeller, you can see an open door. This is access to the outside of the generator.

This is one 50 foot section of ladder the men climb to reach the top. The safety cable in the center of the ladder is attached to the harness the men wear while working.

It was nice to learn more about the generators from the people who work on them. We were definitely impressed with the large size and output of these mega generators.

June 26, 2008

We are in Elk River, Minnesota to have a dual tire equalization system called crossfire installed on our RV’s. As you can see in the picture below, the two tires are connected together, including a gauge, so they both have the same air pressure. On our RV’s the gauge is for 95 pounds and indicates if the tires are over or under inflated. This system allows us to make a quick tire pressure check each morning prior to departing and keeps both tires at the same air pressure.

Richard and Vera’s RV is on the left.

While Richard and Vera stayed around close to the shop, Char and I went to the Mall of America. For those of you who don’t know this mall, here are a few facts from their brochure. There are over 520 stores, 50 restaurants and the nation’s largest indoor amusement park featuring 24 rides.

This place is enormous. We walked around for a little while and had lunch prior to going back to our motor home.

June 24, 2008

We are at Scott County Park near Eldridge, Iowa. The campground we planned to stay at was filled and they recommended one of the State Parks. The first we tried was full also and they directed us to Scott County Park. This place is beautiful with large sites that have great level pads for the RV. The only negative thing is the abundance of gnats. They are everywhere and a real nuisance. The rangers told us they are extremely bad this year because of all the flooding.

Today we went to The John Deere Pavilion, John Deere Collectors Center and John Deere Store across the river in Moline, Illinois. What a great place to learn about the changes in farming and farm implements during the last hundred years or so.

Here is a group of school kids waiting to enter the pavilion.

Vera found one she liked.

I think we were all surprised to discover this harvester cost around $400,000.00.

At The Collectors Center, Vera wanted to take us for a little ride.

This is the John Deere World Headquarters.

This is the entry to the headquarters. These are all full sized machines.

I found one that was just right for me.

Char, the farm girl, became the heavy equipment operator. She declined to say whether or not she belongs to the Operators Union.

After all the John Deere fun we went to see the mighty Mississippi River. Even though the water level had gone down in the last couple of days, there was still no barge traffic.

This road along the river reopened this morning and still needed a little more clean up.

Vera said she could feel the power of the river from her fingertips to her toes.

Here you can see two birds leisurely floating along on a piece of driftwood.

These are some of the contaminated sandbags waiting to be removed.

We were fortunate to be able to visit the area along the Mississippi River after the terrible floods. A lot of people are still homeless in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri from the rising waters.

June 21, 2008

Our traveling companions Richard and Vera joined us today. We will travel together for the next eighteen days as we all go west to Mount Rushmore. Of course we plan to stop and take in many other sights along the way. After Mount Rushmore, we will head south to see Abby, Karl and Jill. Richard and Vera will go back to Minnesota to attend a FMCA Rally in Minneapolis and then return to New York and family prior to heading south for the winter. We will start our journey together on Monday, June 23rd. It is great to be together again.

June 18, 2008

We enjoy getting our exercise walking. A few days ago, we visited the Red Mill County Park a few miles south of Michigan City. It was a beautiful day and this is a great place for a walk. We walked a couple of miles around the lake and through the woods.

There are clearly marked trails through the area.

This is the dam that creates the lake. We stopped to watch a family of geese out for their morning swim.

There are many places to stop and enjoy the beauty of the Park.

There are lots of big trees along the hiking paths to provide cool shade as the temperature rises.

Local and County Parks are not usually along the major highways and take a little searching to find them. We like to visit with the local Chambers of Commerce, libraries, campground owners and other residents to find the great out of the way places. Most people are happy to share information and locations of their favorite local get-away spots.

June 14, 2008

Tonight we went to the Westville High School Alumni Association Banquet and Dance. The association members are all graduates and spouses from Westville High School. They have a banquet each year and honor classes in ten year multiples since graduation. Tonight the honored classes were from 1998, 1988, 1978, 1968, 1958 and 1948. It was a fun evening and we had the opportunity to learn a little about the people in the honored classes.

We joined some of our fellow graduates for dinner and conversation. We had 32 graduating classmates and tonight 4 were at the banquet. Char and I were two of the four. Below is a picture of the four youngsters from our class.

L to R: Richard Bartmess, me, Char and Betty Elliott Townsend.

Our class will be honored in four more years and more of our classmates will be present then.

June 10, 2008

We are once again at Fleetwood in Decatur, Indiana to have some more work done on the shower that still was not working correctly. This time they replaced the control valves and it seems to be a little better. I don’t think we will be going back for more shower repairs. We have decided this is probably the best we can expect and will learn to live with the current condition.

June 5, 2008

Today we drove about 50 miles to Bremen, Indiana to have the rear differential in the motor home checked. A week ago, the mechanic at the local RV dealer, found very little gear lube in the differential while performing a routine inspection during an oil change and lubrication. He added gear lube and we were told to take our RV to a Workhorse Service Center for further inspection. At the service center they found too much gear lube had been added and removed the excess. It was a nice day for a ride and we were very happy to learn no damage was done and no further maintenance was required.

June 4, 2008

This is day three and the last day of our fishing trip. The weather isn’t very good. There is a heavy mist and it looks it could rain hard at anytime. The weather forecast is for sunny skies and temperature in the lower eighties. Hopefully the day will get better later.

Instead of going out on the lake this morning, we went to the sporting goods store where Bob bought his fly rod that broke and see about the lifetime guarantee. They are sending his rod back to the manufacturer for replacement. It will take a few weeks and then he will have a new fly rod. Here is Bob standing next a nice stringer of bluegill that the owner of the store caught.


These are some very large bluegill. We didn’t catch any like the big one but we did do well.

The weather did clear later in the morning and we headed for the lake. Today’s catch wasn’t a big as yesterday but the fish were larger. Once again we had very windy conditions on the lake making it difficult to put those magic poppers in the best places to catch fish. Rick caught the largest again today. He is a very good fisherman.

This is one of the fish Rick caught today. At the end of the afternoon, we had 30 good size fish to fillet.

Here you can see the novice, me, getting directions on how to land a nice fish. Bob is multitalented. He can take pictures and give instructions as the same time.

Rick is happily holding the largest bluegill he caught today.

The people that own the place where we stayed don’t enjoy fishing but love to eat them. After cleaning today’s catch, we gave them to these kind people who shared there home with us. I’m sure they will enjoy them as much if not more than we would.

We had a great time and three days does go by quickly when you have this much fun. Hopefully we will get the opportunity to do this again sometime. Thank you Bob and Rick for a very memorable fishing trip.

June 3, 2008

When we got up this morning, as predicted, it looked like it would rain today. We had a little rain in the morning and enough in the afternoon to make us stop fishing. Rick and I wore rain suits in the afternoon but a real man doesn’t need one.

Today is my birthday so they let me catch the most and have the honor of the biggest catch of the day. Thanks a lot for a terrific Birthday present. It was very windy in the morning and we had a hard time finding appropriate places to fish with a fly rod. We did catch fish but it wasn’t easy. After lunch the wind eased up a little and we caught fish in some of the places we couldn’t fish in the morning before getting rained out.

Later, the afternoon rain stopped and Rick wanted to go back out and see if we could catch a few more fish. We did have good luck and caught nice bluegills. Because of starting and stopping a couple of times today we didn’t think we had as many fish as yesterday’s 52. On the way to the boat dock, Rick took the fish from the live well and put them in a 5-gallon bucket and counted them. Much to our surprise, we caught 95 fish today and most were bigger than yesterday’s catch. Today we had a lot of 9 to 11 inch long bluegills.

All I could think of was how long it will take to fillet them. Rick and I handled this chore while Bob made our dinner.

Here are some more pictures from today.

This is what serious fishermen look like.

I bought this reference guide for Bob although he doesn’t think he needs it.

This is my biggest catch of the day.

Rick is happy with this catch and Bob is the proud Papa who taught Rick to fish.

Bob likes his catch also.

Did I tell you about the bass I caught?

Unfortunately Bob broke his rod landing this bluegill.

Today fog rolled in just before sunset.

This is the freezer with 294 fish fillets after two days of fishing.

All three of us are very tired and our backs ache from setting and standing in the boat all day. We should not have any problems falling to sleep tonight.