June 7, 2008

Elaine, Bart and Suzie left home this morning at 8:50 am. The angel clip is on the visor. The Monkeys will know what that means. At 12:50 pm and 173.6 miles later they arrived at Presque Isle Downs and Casino near Erie, PA. On the way they put 55 gallons of gas in the coach in Pennsylvania at $3.959, ten cents a gallon less that at home.

Elaine and Bart enjoyed their usual luck at the slots; that is they lost a few dollars. Despite their resolve before leaving home that they would eat most meals in the coach, Bart could not pass up the casino buffet. It was not as good as Seneca Niagara in Niagara Falls, NY.

After supper they went out to watch the ponies run. On a lark, Bart placed a $2.00 bet to win on the number 8 horse, Research Rocks. Unbelievably, it finished first and paid $17.20. Bart said, “We should have bet $2000.00 and paid for the trip”. 

Not to be outdone, Elaine placed a $2.00 bet to win on the number 5 horse in the next race, Chestnut Blast. It also won but only paid $3.40.

Feeling pretty good about their handicapping skills, Bart placed a $2.00 box bet on 1 and 2 for the perfecta for the next race and Elaine placed a $2.00 bet to win on the number 2 horse, Holy Armenia. That nag should have been named “Holy Anemia” instead because he finished an anemic sixth in a six horse race. 

But wait, the scoreboard blinked “Objection, hold your tickets”. The results were being challenged. Maybe the first five horses would be disqualified and Holy Anemia was the winner? No way!

Realizing they had no future handicapping the horses, they went back to the slots where they recouped some of their losses. Tomorrow, Kay and Bill, and Giz and Coz will join them and they all will continue on toward Shipshewana, IN.

June 8, 2008

Bill and Kay met Elaine and Bart about 1:30 pm and we all headed west. We are camped at Schaun Acres Campground in Oberlin, OH tonight. It was not where we intended to stay, but to make a long story short, Bart depended too much on his laptop and Microsoft to get them to the wrong place. 

At Schaun Acres Campground

It has been very windy both days and we are sore and tired from fighting the wind to keep the motor homes on track. We had a great dinner at Lorenzo’s in Oberlin (we all had lasagna, very good) and we are beat. It is an early night. 173 miles today.

June 9, 2008

Arrived in Shipshewana, IN today, 189.9 miles. Filled up the tank in Toledo, OH (36 gallons at $3.969). Going to the flea market tomorrow.

At Shipshewanna Campground

June 10, 2008

We all went to the Shipshewana Flea Market today. We had some great pictures of Kay, Bill and Elaine looking for “fleas” and also one of the Amish buggies. Unfortunately, Bart screwed up the camera and lost them all.

We got a lot of rain but not as much as Wisconsin. We are heading out tomorrow for the Wisconsin Dells. We’ve been assured the boat tours are still running.

June 11, 2008

Bad news and good news. Bad: On the way to Shipshewana one of Bart’s valve extenders on the rear dual tires came loose. Without going into technical details it resulted in the loss of all air pressure in the inside rear tire causing it to just flop against the pavement for 70 miles or so. He didn’t discover it until last night when he checked pressure in preparation for today’s travel.

Good: The other tire held up and did not blow so no real harm was done (Thanks Monkeys). Well, there was harm to Bart’s wallet as he ended up getting two new tires. And, while waiting for road service to show up, he was able to retake a couple of pictures.

Also, we have had a change in plans. Due to the heavy rains and flooding in Wisconsin, we have scrapped the trip to the Wisconsin Dells. We are currently staying in Elkhart, IN through Sunday.

We will be refiguring our itinerary and will post it when we know where we are going. 

Thanks to all of you who have sent us emails. We do appreciate them. Maybe over the next couple of days we can respond to some of them. We do have WiFi at this park.

June 13, 2008

Not much happened today. The women-folk did laundry. Bart did some repairs on his coach. Kay and Bart had some of Bart’s secret recipe “lemonade” (more gin than ade we think), and we all went to Ryan’s Steak House for supper to celebrate Fathers’ Day early. When we returned we took a walk around the campground and Kay said she saw a white rat. We all thought it was just the “lemonade” but then Bart saw it. Well, that could still be the “lemonade”. Then Elaine and Bill saw it too and more folks came out to see it. The picture below proves it was not just “lemonade”.

We never did find out where it came from, if it was somebody’s pet that got loose or what.

June 14, 2008

What a day! We left Elkhart, IN at 8:50 am EDT and headed for Baraboo, WI. We planned to visit the Circus Museum on Sunday. We arrived at a campground at 6:00 pm CDT, ten hours and 300 miles later. 

Route I-90 in Wisconsin was closed for a 50 mile stretch due to flooding and they routed us onto US 12 which was a four lane divided highway at 55 mph. It was great. Then it became two lane, then two lane under construction. I think you can guess what happens when four lanes of interstate traffic joins the regular traffic on a two lane road under construction.

Bumper to bumper for about three hours. At one point it took nine minutes to go one-tenth of a mile. The last six miles to the campground took 47 minutes. But wait, it gets better.

When we got to the campground office, we met a couple on the phone to a tow service. It seems they had just parked their 40 foot diesel (it was a nice coach) on a site and sunk their rear tires in soft ground up to the axles.

Bill and Bart walked down to the sites reserved for them. One might have been hard enough for Bart’s gas coach but Bill’s diesel weighs around 32,000 pounds. Not wanting to repeat the sinking coach trick, we decided to leave.

But wait, it gets better yet. Because we were each towing cars we could not back up without unhooking and re-hooking up the cars. And there was no space hard enough and big enough to turn around. There was another driveway out but a tree branch had broken off and was hanging down in it and there were two logs blocking the exit end of it.

So Bart did his impression of Superman on Kryptonite and dragged the tree branch out of the way and rolled the two logs out of the way (they were dried pine so not too heavy). Then we were able to swing around the driveway and exit the campground. But wait, you know what is coming.

And the best part, we are lucky enough to share the casino parking lot with a Harley-Davidson Owners Group Wisconsin State Rally. There must be about a thousand bikers here. We were all so tired, we never heard a thing all night.

But every cloud has a silver lining. We had a great buffet supper. The casino gave us each $10.00 in free play. Elaine and Bart left with $13.00 and Kay and Bill walked out with $16.00.

Oh yeah, we put 37 gallons at $3.969 in today.

Last updated June 15, 2008