South Bend

Football Sunday, normally on a Sunday we just sit around and watch football, but it's a bright sunny day and is going to be pushing 80, so we decided to push Mondays activities up to today, besides it's suppose to rain most of Monday.

So it's off to South Bend, we're going to lose our Michigan accents while we're there since Michigan State beat Notre Dame in overtime yesterday. We dug out the old TomTom GPS, slapped it on the dash and we were on our way. Traffic in South Bend is a nightmare, roads go from one to two lanes then back to one lane at will, ten feet before an intersection our lane turns into a turn only lane without warning, stop signs are just a suggestion. I think with Notre Dame being here the driving method most used is, point the car, hit the gas and pray to Jesus that you get where you want to go.

Of course we got lost again and just started wandering and we ended up driving by the Stadium and seeing the giant touchdown Jesus on campus. I had to call our grandson and let him know that we saw it since his long term plan is to attend Notre Dame, he's already visited the campus twice for a weekend and is dead set on going here. When you look at the brochures for Notre Dame right beside where it sez tuition is shows $$$$$$.

After lunch at Culver's we finally found our objective, the Potawatomi Zoo. We almost turned around and left because the parking lot was full and we figured that it would be to crowded to enjoy, but we need the exercise so we thought that we would give it a try, good thing we did because it turned out that all the cars were for a couple of family picnics in the adjacent park and the zoo had very few people in it.

This is a very nice smaller zoo, very simple to navigate, just decide whether you want to go clockwise or counter-clockwise and you'll end up back where you started and see everything. We spent close to two hours here and the animals were very active today. Here's a few pictures.

Albino Boa.

..........Hairy Thing





Barnyard animal display



......................Cute thing





Macaw


......................Ugly thing






Red Panda that gave birth last month to three kits





University of Michigan Bird

..............Scary thing

And Finally a self Portrait, the face only a mother and Cathy could Love.

Finally, Back on the Road

Since our lot at Light House Village is empty we must be back on the road for the winter.
We did an easy drive across southern Michigan to La Porte, Indiana and set up camp for a few days.

Our plan was to drive back to Niles, Michigan and tour the Fernwood Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve and the Fort St Joseph Museum. I programed the GPS for a few stops and we were on our way. First stop was the Museum, the building that it's located in is the old carriage house of the Chapin house.

This is another one of those great little museums that has few one of a kind items that you would expect to find in a much larger museum. The items I like best were twelve sketches made by Chief Sitting Bull after his surrender out west. The story is that a local girl was married to a military officer who was stationed out west and was in charge of Sitting Bull and his family, she was living there with her husband and became friends with Sitting Bull and his family. She saw some of his sketches and asked him if he would make some for her, she provided him with a sketch book and he did a series of drawings showing some of the different battles he was in during his life. When her husband died she moved the family back to Niles and after her death her daughter donated the drawings to the museum. Every year in October Chief Sitting Bull's Great-Great-Great Grandson comes to the museum and spends the day, talking about Sitting Bull and telling stories that have been passed down through the family.

There is also an interesting display on the Underground Railroad which Michigan played a large part in helping run away slaves get to Canada. Some of the old slave songs that they sang were really codes telling them which routes to take north and what houses were safe to stop at to receive help and assistance in their journey.

We also found out that Niles is the home of Simplicity Patterns, the founder of Montgomery Wards which was a large Department store chain in the mid-west, the Dodge brothers of automotive fame and many more things. The museum is well worth the hour and a half or so to tour. Admission by Donation. No Photography allowed in the museum.

The Carriage House is a pretty impressive building so here is a picture of the house in front of it. The house is used by the city as their City Hall, how would you like to come to work here every day.

When we came out of the museum it was very overcast and looked like the rains were moving in so we decided to hold off on the gardens and see a few other things, when I went to program the GARMIN GPS all I got was a screen telling me that I was locked out of my maps and nothing would work. Since we started using a GPS I've pretty much stopped carrying a map in the car, so we were unable to locate the other small places that we wanted so it was time to start wandering and see what happened.

The first thing we stumbled on was the old railroad depot, we thought that it looked very photogenic and when we stopped we found out that we were right, it's appeared in the movies Continental Divide, Midnight Run(one of my favorites) & Only the Lonely.

After 45 minutes of wandering around Cathy was happy because we ended up at a giant outlet mall in Michigan City, she decided that this was the perfect place for us to do our daily walking exercise, some how walking around lifting a credit card doesn't do the same as lifting weights.

Well the rain caught up with us so we found a local hamburger stand and enjoyed a Schoop's burger, after that it was back to camp to dig out the old TomTOM GPS and hope that I still have all the cables for it.

Maybe I'm Just Stupid

Maybe it’s me and I just don’t get it, I’m still amazed that the stores now put out their Halloween stuff right after the Fourth of July and Christmas stuff the day school starts in the fall. But last February our little electric heater died while we were in central Georgia, no problem I’ll just run down to the big box store and buy a new one, wrong. Every store I went to was sold out and when I asked them when they would be getting more in they all told me that they were done for the season, it snowed two days later but the season was over. We tried every place we could think of as we headed north and it took about three weeks before a guy at a Home Depot went in the back room and opened up a crate that was scheduled to be shipped back to the warehouse and dug one out for us. We arrived in Michigan in mid April and continued to use the heater into early May.

So a few weeks ago I started working inside the shed at our lot (converting it into a bunkhouse for the grand kids & a MAN cave for me), since the sheds all have to be painted dark brown and are not allowed to have windows I figured that I would get the air conditioner this year and work in comfort. Wrong again! It’s the first week of August, it’s in the mid 90’s and the humidity is pushing about 95 and guess what, nobody has any air conditioners because the season is over for the year. My calendar most really be messed up because the other day when I was re- shingling the shed I had to drink about two gallons of water because of the heat. So the good news this week is that it only took me four stores to find a fan to use until January when the air conditioners start showing up in the stores again.

Meanwhile Cathy and I started getting things ready so we can head towards the southwest in a few weeks when it dawned on me, the season is probably already over so we might as well just sit here and save on gas.