Blogs from Rockford, Illinois, United States, North America

Finale The Anchorage-Seattle/Seattle-O'Hare flights home were long but uneventful. The limo was right there waiting for us at O'Hare. Four weary bodies were shuttled home to Rockford. We finally settled down about two in the morning. Dave and I were out at the airport at seven the next morning, hopped in the 182 and flew to Forrest City, IA to pick up the car. Again thanks to Dick and Vera Hynes (Forest City and Cedar Hammock residents) for hosting our car in their driveway for three weeks. As we drove by the Winnebago plant we saw another hundred Minnie Winnies lined up on the staging field waiting to be delivered to who knows where. We were told that there's a great shortage of workers at Winnebago and they cannot manufacture motorhomes fast enough. Five-hour drive back ... read more

Having spent some time planning visits with family and friends as well as allowing for some impromptu sibling time, I had a pretty full schedule for my three weeks in northern Illinois when I departed Springfield IL on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. With the exception of a 20-30 minute downpour on I-39 that reduced ALMOST everyone’s speed to 35-40 mph, the three-hour trip was uneventful. Welcome back to the Midwest! Rockford, for all of its shortcomings, has an excellent park system and has numerous well-done festivals. Unfortunately, a couple of the better festivals - the Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-In and the On the Waterfront festival - have departed for whatever reason. I decided to check the events schedule and found that a World War II Reenactment would be held at Midway Village in Rockford during my ... read more

When we left our friends in New Hampshire, we headed up into Maine. We started our Maine trip with a three day stay in Boothbay Harbor. We went on a whale watch trip, and saw whales, and a lot of seals. We were on the water about 4 hours. It was sunny, but quite cool for our Florida bodies. When we got back from the whale watching, we went to a nice restaurant on the dock, and ate whole lobster dinners. Back at our campsite, we leaned back and enjoyed looking at the stars. We got to see several meteor showers. Pretty awesome to watch them. The next day, we went into town, and shopped. Their are a lot of nice shops there, and we found some souveniers to bring home. On the way into town ... read more