Michigan City, IN to Grand Island, NE August 11 to August 15, 2015

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THE BASICS

Really, we have driven from Indiana to Nebraska through a lot of rolling hills and flat fields. We spent a warm day in Chicago, and have enjoyed college towns in Iowa - Iowa City and Grinnell. It has been quite hot, up to the 90's, but breezes during the days and air conditioning indulgence at night have helped us be relatively comfortable. We should get to our target of Fort Collins, CO, by Tuesday, as planned.

THE FLUFF

John began his birthday celebration with an extended internet session. We motored to the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, IN. They have a huge collection of very old RV's, which are very rustic and made us appreciate ours even more. They have the first Fleetwood Bounder ever made - quite different from our model. We continued on to Michigan City, IN, and stayed in a campground where we actually stayed a couple of years ago, visiting my cousin Sandy. This time our site was much nicer, and we enjoyed chatting with the nice couple next to us. When we left, he gave us a whittled stick he had recently made. His hobby is whittling, not making anything in particular, just whittling.

The terrain seemed to change slightly from OH to IN, becoming a bit more hilly and less agricultural. John says maybe that's because of the sandier soil near Lake Michigan. I much appreciate seeing laundry flapping on lines in the hot sun. (non sequitur)

The next day we went into Chicago and returned to the same campground exhausted. We caught the 8:37 train on the South Shore Line from Carroll Avenue in Michigan City to Millenium Park, a nearly two hour ride but so easy. For the 50 mile trip to Chicago, it cost us $18 for two senior round trips! The more public transportation people develop, the better!

When we visit cities, we so often enjoy just strolling around and gawking at everything. And on this warm sunny day, we chose to skip the wonderful museums and stay outside, except for lunch. So we saw The Bean in Millenium Park, and walked along on the riverwalk, but did eat inside, at Weber Grill. Really, it's a restaurant developed by the Weber Grill people. We shared a delicious grilled Korean sweet and spicy shrimp salad.

Then a 90 minute architectural heritage boat ride through the city. The docent gave very detailed and very interesting information. I never would have realized that the window glass was chosen to match the river color. Or known that part of the Trump building is suspended from beams rather than sitting on a foundation.

A few years ago, I read Devil in the White City, set in Chicago during the World's Fair with a parallel story of a gruesome serial killer. I still get chills when I remember the book, and while there, we heard that Leonardo DiCaprio has been chosen to play the killer in the movie version. Shudder.

On through Illinois to Iowa on Route 80. When we get annoyed with the sameness of superhighways, we switch to less traveled roads, then have the superhighways to resort to again. Nice balance.

I had two very different experiences at rest stops. At one in Illinois, there were many picnic tables and a large playground, but most fascinating, in the shelter, was a map showing the canal we were near that was built to connect the Chicago and Illinois River, thus enabling inland shipping from New York City to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi. Important history.

At a rest stop in Iowa, I had a very different experience. You know how, often, when you look for rest rooms, you enter an opening and the men are on the left and the women on the right or vice versa. Well, I saw a men sign on a right opening and entered the left. I saw urinals, and one of my theories was that Iowa is really progressive and they accommodate transgender people. Well, when I was leaving, there was a man hunched over a urinal and I saw that the women's facilities were across the hallway. Whoops. John wouldn't even consider letting me drive because he thought I was "losing it."

We passed an Iowa rest area which advertised that it was an "Iowa Primary Welcome Center." Hmm.

We stayed at a lovely campground in Oxford, Iowa, with a pool and a lake, and a gang of little kids running around. We are not finding many campgrounds with cable hookups, but our antenna is working quite nicely in some places. On Thursday night, we got to watch CBS Evening News. Then PBS - Father Brown! And Doc Martin!! Bliss.

On Friday morning, we realized that the Iowa State Fair opens today, and brings a deluge of candidates to Des Moines along with fairgoers. So we wanted to be sure to avoid the fair area. My early morning eyes (well recovered from the pink eye, but still slow to focus) saw an abbreviation on the map of Des Moines, and asked John what Saint Fergirand's might be. Oh, well.

John had made an appointment to leave the RV for an oil change at Mike's Repair Shop at 8:00 A.M. on Friday, and then we would drive into Iowa City to explore and return to pick up the RV. I followed him in the car and could not believe the route. Was it another one of John's "shortcuts" or "scenics"? The roads were all dirt and very dusty. More than that, they were very steep. Very. I was utterly shocked when we arrived at Mike's Repair Shop, which was literally in the middle of nowhere/corn fields, several miles from regular highways.

John explained that "cut and fill" is the engineering process used to level ground for major highways. I surely appreciate that Route 80 and its sisters were much flatter than those dirt roads.

We thought Iowa City was lovely, especially a coffee shop near campus named Java House. They hand-filtered even our plain regular coffees. Lots of tables, with many very professorish-looking older gentlemen. The University of Iowa is on both sides of the Iowa River! I've seen campuses split by streets and by railroad tracks, but a river?!

We retrieved our RV at Mike's and continued on across Iowa. We had skipped visiting the Amana Colonies, where quilts were a big thing. As I sat in my passenger seat with my head bobbling from side to side, I wondered if the fields were meant to look like quilts too. They had such varied patterns of color (crop), size, direction, and the rolling hills even made them look like occupied beds, that it truly was neat to observe. Now, in Nebraska, there are fields that look exactly the same as far as the eye can see.

We enjoyed our lunch and a stroll on the campus of the college in Grinnell, Iowa. A bright shiny bubblegum pink Hummer drove by us, and we wondered if little Sophie would go for it. Our afternoon's challenge was to secure a spot for the night, and we did want access to an electric hookup because it was very hot. The maps and guidebooks and phone numbers seemed to be conspiring against us. Finally, we spotted a blurb about the East Pott County Fairgrounds Campground, and took a chance. Well, it was rustic, at best. The shower facilities were about the worst I have ever seen. But the people were very nice and we had water and electric and a restful night. There were two of the most adorable blond toddlers ever, who "drove" by in their tiny motorized car a few times. And John kept saying Pottawatamie (Pott), the same way my grandson Kieran cracks up when he says "The store where you get more for your money" with an exaggerated Boston accent.

There were hundreds of windmills on the hills as we approached Omaha. And that was the first time I had noticed "contour strip cropping," which John explained has something to do with water control.

We stopped for groceries. One thing we got was a cantaloupe, which I put in a fruit bowl. When we stopped awhile later, the bowl was empty and so began the search for the wandering cantaloupe. Really, this RV is not all that big, but we could not find the darn thing! Finally, finally, John lifted the leather skirt of the passenger seat and there was the hiding culprit.

We have arrived at a KOA Campground near Route 80 and Grand Island. The corn out our front window is as tall as we are. And we have a steak to grill for supper.

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Comments

[Ross]

Best wishes
John and Linda, It is nice to read your account of your travels. I guess we won't see you at the Cove again this year. We will be there from 3 Nov to 1 Apr except for 3 or 4 weeks around Christmas. See you next year I hope.

[Dennis Mathews]

Hello Linda and John
Good to hear that you two are enjoying yourselves. I grew up a few miles south of Elkhart, IN in Goshen. Elkhart was always our arch rival. My father out-lived his first two wives and when he married his third he moved to Elkhart to live in her house. So, from 1982 until she sold the house a couple of years ago I would go there when I was back in IN to visit family. The RV industry has been really big in that area for many years. Unfortunately for local economies RV purchases are closely tied to the overall economy and gas prices. After the downturn in 2008 unemployment in Elkhart was among the worst in the country. However, I never knew there was an RV museum.