Here we are, on the road: August 2013

August 25, 2013 Lorraine’s report

Hello everyone from Thousand Trails, Kenisee Lakes by Jefferson, Ohio. We have enjoyed a nice week this week. We have spent some time visiting with Beth & Eric R, After working on the blog last Sunday, we spent the afternoon just visiting.

Monday found us headed back to the doctor's office. The doctor said I had an infection on the foot the Orthopedic doctor operated on back on June 27th, 2013. It will be two months this coming Tuesday and it still isn't healed. It is finally getting better, but we have been soaking it in Epsom salts and once again the antibiotics are working. I had 2 different types of staph infections. After the nurse pulled out the stitches, my foot stitches separated most of the way down to the bone. I was on one antibiotic before I saw this last doctor, but after seeing him, he put me on another antibiotic. And now I'm on a third antibiotic.

After the doctor we went to the downtown Detroit area for a tour. I'm sure glad we were not from that area. There was lots to see, but some of the poorer neighbors left me wondering how people live and how they just survive the location.

After that we went by the Greek Casino for a few minutes, left a few dollars, then went home to eat, spending a quiet evening watching TV.

Tuesday we went exploring again over to Huron. After that we came home and made up tacos; Beth & Eric came over and then we played "Pass the Love'. It was all fun.

Wednesday was a quiet, spend the whole day home, that is until dinner. Then Chuck decided maybe we should go find a Cracker Barrel for supper, so we did.

Thursday found us headed out again, so we left the Detroit, MI area and came over to here. We have a nice site in the back in area, 50 amp, water and sewer, so I'm happy.

One of the neighbors here at the park told us about some peaches, but this was a few miles away from us. So we set out to find the peaches; and we did find the peaches, which are really good! Then the gal there told us about the covered bridge just a short ways away from us, so we went looking for it. The bridge is one of the oldest and I think Chuck said it was the longest. It was pretty neat and of course I had to put only one foot in the water, called the Grand River.

We had Steak and Shake for supper, our first one of these hamburger shops and had a good meal there.

Saturday we headed out again, this time to see A Christmas Story, Ralphie Parker's House, the one where Ralphie grows up in. It's just before Christmas and Ralphie wants a Red Rider BB Gun, but everyone says,"You'll shot your eyes out". There was an original cast member, and he shows/tells us about the bloopers that happened within the movie. We enjoyed this museum a lot!

From there, Chuck plugged in the "Rock N Roll Hall of Fame". There is so much there to see, we didn't get to see/do/experience it all, since we had left Misty and it was time to take her out for a walk. And I must say it was 50 years since the Rolling Stones arrived on the scene, and they were having a big celebration for the Stones. I took tons of pictures of this venue.

There is lots to see here in Cleveland, OH, and I'm sure we will see a bit more of what's out there. Until next time

Hugs,

Lorraine

8/25/13 Chuck’s Report

Yep, back in Ohio again, it’s been a few years and we weren’t in this area so it’s all new to us. In fact, we’ve been in new area of the country since we left Prior Lake in the middle of July and have sure seen/done lots. We like the fact everything is green up here and the weather has been much better than some of the HOT we might have experienced had we headed South already.

Last week we spent more time with Eric and Beth, played cribbage, dice, cards, shared dinners and lunches and just had a good time. Being with them made our stay in St. Clair that much nicer, thanks guys!

Monday Lorraine returned to the doctor to get her foot checked out again. We got the results of the sample he had taken and sent in to the lab, sure enough she had not just one but three different infections going on, damn hospitals anyway. The antibiotic he had prescribed was good for the first infection type but he wanted to give her a different type to cure the other two. So she is still taking antibiotics but we can see lots of healing going on once again, sure hope this gets it. She is soaking it in Epsom salts twice a day and washing it with peroxide after each soak too.

After the doctor visit we headed into Detroit for another tour. Boy they have some nice buildings in town, the one that impressed me the most was General Motors Headquarters right on Lake St. Clair, very near the Windsor Bridge to cross over into Canada. They don’t give tours of the building plus the parking is non-existent in the area so we didn’t stop. We did manage to walk a small park in the area and drove by another park dedicated to the boxer Joe Lewis, very neat.

We then drove over to check out the casino in the area, neither of us liked it, just didn’t feel good to us. The fact we both lost a few bucks didn’t help either, ha. But we didn't stay there long, that wasn’t the reason we were downtown. And we wanted to get out of town before the afternoon traffic got bad, not sure how bad the traffic jams are but we didn’t want to find out either.

Tuesday we drove back into Port Huron for another visit, we checked out part of the area the week before. This time we drove down to the waterfront and happened to find a small farmer’s market. We bought a few things as we like to support these things whenever we can plus it doesn’t hurt to have really fresh veggies.

Wednesday was a quiet day for us, stayed home and worked on a few items but mostly just rested. Later I took Lorraine to Cracker Barrel for dinner, not sure when we may be close to another one.

Thursday was moving day again, we had been in St. Clair for almost two weeks. I checked online and this park was getting pretty full over the weekend so we decided to arrive on Thursday vs Friday, hoping to beat most of the weekenders. We had a good trip over but were sure glad to see the roads in Ohio are much better than in Michigan, we just about lost the fillings out of our teeth on the freeway in Michigan. Lorraine sent a note to Bill and Susan asking about a route to avoid the toll roads, the route they suggested worked just fine, thanks. Too bad we missed them by one day, slow down and maybe we can catch up to you.

After getting set up we didn’t even drive into town, just stayed at the coach for the rest of the day. We did manage to meet a couple of the neighbors, seem like good folks, same as we find in most campgrounds.

Friday we headed out to tour some of the local area. One of the couples we met told us about a local orchard that has a fruit stand set up with local fruits/vegetables for sale. The said their peaches were some of the best in the area so we wanted to check them out for sure. We did pick up a small bag of peaches plus a couple other items then toured more of the area. The gal at the fruit stand told us about a nearby covered bridge so we checked it out too.

There are 18 covered bridges in the area and we happened to check out the longest in Ohio first. It is over the Grand River and I got a picture of Lorraine putting her foot into the river too. There was a few folks fishing but the only thing they had caught we small perch, not even sure why the kept them as they were too small to fillet and I know they are full of bones. We took some pictures so I’ll probably add some of them when I go through our SD card.

We continue our tour by headed back to the Lake Erie waterfront and driving through a few more small towns. One of the tourist towns is Geneva On The Lake, has most of the normal tourists stuff plus a small Ferris wheel and other rides. Just down the road we came across an Elks lodge right on the shore so we stopped and checked it out too. The gal behind the bar didn’t know much about their activities and if they had any dinners planned plus they didn’t even have a copy of their monthly newsletter?? But it looked like a nice lodge and like I said, it was right on the lakeshore. They have plenty of room and could put up a few RV space, would be a nice area to do that.

We continued our tour for awhile longer and got a good feel for the layout of the area. I’m sure we will have to return another day to spend more time, this was mostly a drive through without stopping too much. We did stop for an early dinner at Steak and Shake, a chain I don’t think we’ve been to before. It was nice, worth stopping at again if we see one in the area we happen to be staying.

Yesterday was our tour of Cleveland. We checked a couple of the brochures and booklets they had a the lodge plus checked online to see what we wanted to do. We are both fans of the movie A Christmas Story, about a boy, Ralphie Parker and his family. The house the movie family lived in is located in Cleveland, a must stop for us. The movie was supposed to have been in Indiana but a big part of it was shot in a department store and this was the only department store they contacted that would let them shoot their movie inside. They had to leave their Christmas decorations up through March plus afterhours was when all the movie shooting was done. Too bad the department store isn’t still there, we would have toured it too.

We when through the museum, saw one of the original cast members who was signing autographs, learned more about the movie and saw some of the memorabilia they had. Of course they also had a store where you could by things from the movie and that’s where we had to buy our tickets to tour the house.

A story about the house, the guy that bought it in the 90s paid $150,000 sight unseen for it. He didn’t know it was just about to be condemned and torn down and was only worth $20,000. He spent over $450,000 remolding and putting it back into the movie condition and the same furnishing they had when the movie was shot. Now that guy is a fan of the movie! There were probably about 35 people there at the same time we were and everyone said it was a slow day so he will probably make his money back. I guess they have lots of activities there in the wintertime too.

Later we headed further downtown, we wanted to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. It is located on the shores of Lake Erie and after we found it we couldn’t get a parking spot, everything was full. I had just programed the GPS to return home when I noticed one opening across the road, made an illegal u-turn and snagged it.

I bought combo tickets for here and for the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio for another trip later in our stay. We spent a few hours in here, most of it I could have done without as I am not a big followers of bands (or other famous people). The part that I liked the best was on the third floor, they have a theater where they show all the inductees and play a bit of their music, that was the only place I could hear the music except for some of the monitors they had around the place. They showed the inductees year by year and played about 10 minutes of music from each year. I think Rock and Roll was over in the 70s but they even have rappers there now?? Guess I would/should go to the Country Music Hall of Fame instead.

One thing I’m not used to is the time the NFL football games are on TV back here. The afternoon games are evening games here and the evening games are night games. I’m not used to staying up past bedtime to see the end of a football game, not sure what I’ll do when the regular season starts.

The weather has been really nice this past week, highs have gotten into the low 90s twice but otherwise only into the mid 80s. The nighttime temps drop to the high 50s to mid 60s, a couple of nights I’ve turned on the heater to knock off the chill overnight. The humidity has been high a couple of days, we’ve even had a couple of rains, just enough to pot mark the dust on the car. The forecast is for some rain on Tuesday this week, we’ll see if they get it right or not.

I need to work some more on our travel plans for the next couple of months. I have a rough idea of where we will go and places to stay in those areas but need to contact the parks. Our next planned stop is in New York so we can visit Niagara Falls for our first time. We then plan to continue heading NE to see the fall colors in New England area. This will be our first trip to the area so we want to really check the area out and see as much as we can so we plan on moving around vs staying in one place.

Now to go through the pictures and add some here. I know Lorraine took lots of pictures at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, don’t know how many I will have to put in here.

Detroit skyline.