We left North Vernon on Wednesday, September 3, and drove to Liberty, Indiana, where we stayed at another Coast to Coast park, Heritage Hills. The next day, Earl went golfing at the Bruce H. Gregory Golf Course.
On Friday, we drove to Auburn where we stayed at the Elks Club. The Elks RV Guide said that this lodge had 20 sites with electric and water. WRONG! There is a water bib at the southwest corner of the building, but the bartender couldn't find the handle for it, so we had to use a pair of pliers to turn it on! For electricity, an extension cord had to be put through a window of the garage to which we backed up. Not only that, but the map in the guide had the lodge located in the wrong place. Oh well, we did finally find it!
The next day, we visited the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Museum. The Museum is located in the building where these beautiful automobiles were made. In addition to these 3 models, the museum also had automobiles from other manufacturers, many of which were produced in Indiana! It seems that the Depression did in many of these manufacturers. We highly recommend a visit to this museum to anyone in the area.
Monday, September 8, we left Auburn and drove to the Coast to Coast park, Grand View Bend, in Howe, Indiana. While there, we took a trip to Shipshewana, an Amish village. We were going to have lunch there at a popular restaurant, but there was a very long line, so we bought some BIG cookies instead!
On Saturday, we moved to the Elkhart Campground in Elkhart. We had lunch at Bennigans, and then, in the evening, we went to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse with other fellow Boomers, including Bill and Gisela Pollock, and Ron and Donna Monroe.
Sunday morning, we formed a caravan with other Boomers who were going to park at the Escapade in the generator area, for the trip down to the fairgrounds in Goshen. People who were driving motorhomes pulling toads were required to disconnect the toad before arriving at the fairgrounds, so I drove Chris Christiansen's car since she is a solo. We got parked in short order, and walked down to the registration center to pick up our packages with all the information in them for the scheduling of classes and entertainment. We had lunch at the fairgrounds after picking up our registration packets.
The next four days were spent going to classes, visiting with friends, checking out the various vendors, and eating! We made a trip to the Das Dutchman Essenhaus Restaurant, where we'd eaten the last time we'd attended the Fall Escapade in Goshen. This restaurant has GREAT food! On the last night of the Escapade, we had a Boomer Pizza Party.
On Friday, we went back to the Grand View Bend RV park in Howe. We did grocery shopping, laundry, and, of course, dumped our tanks.
Sunday, we drove to the American Campground in Kalamazoo, Michigan, one of our Coast to Coast parks. We spent six nights at this campground, where it rained almost every day! And, of course, it was our luck to have chosen a spot where, when it rained, it became a lake!
While we were in Kalamazoo, we had dinner a couple of times at Fricanos of Alamo, a place with very good Italian food. We went back the second time because we'd seen people eating pizza which looked very good -- very thin crusts, which we like. And it was good! We also took our Yamaha generator in for repair -- it had stopped working while we were at the Escapade. Since the generator was still under warranty, the repairs were done without charge to us...the place where the repairs were done didn't even charge us for the oil change!
We originally were planning on heading north from Kalamazoo, going through the UP of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, with a stop in Sioux Falls so we could register to vote, before heading south toward Quartzsite. However, the weather reports said that this areas was going to be cold -- high's in the 40's -- so we decided to head south instead. So, on Saturday, September 27, we left Kalamazoo, headed south, and spent the night at the Driftwood Camp RV Park in Edinburgh, Indiana. We had dinner that night at the Cracker Barrel.
On Monday, we headed for Mammoth Cave National Park. We were planning on staying at a Coast to Coast park near there, but they said they were full -- which I didn't believe, but the campground at the National Park was nice. We didn't take the time to explore the Cave, so we'll have to come back and do that another time.
Tuesday saw us at the Joy-O RV Park near Denmark, Tennessee. We'd stopped and had lunch at Subway, and to fuel the truck.
