Tuesday June 16, 2009

Today I woke to find Bill finishing up his preparations to leave for RV Capitol to have his new electric fireplace installed and then to have Lippert come over and make some suspension repairs made. They left around 7:45 to go over to Elkhart. Several others were scheduled to have work done today, and they all were gone by 8:30 or so.

We ate a little breakfast of cereal and decided to go for a ride around the area. We asked Bob and Christina to go, and Christina said she would go after they went for their walk. I came back inside and did some computer work. I had gone to Terry H's seminar on points of interest for our Garmin GPS devices so I came inside and downloaded some documents. I tried to load them into the device but had some trouble, so I went over to talk to Terry about it. He walked me through the process, so I came back home.

It had started to rain but we drove over and picked Christina up about 11 and rode over to Howe to check out the Grand Bend RV park for Donna. While driving, we all marveled at the Amish farms that are over the area here. They have the prettiest places you can imagine and most of it is done without machinery or electricity. The men work in the fields and the women and children maintain the homes. I have read that the men all get together to build their homes and other structures on the farms, but we didn't get to see this being done. The Amish lead a very simple life on their farms, wearing very plain and simple clothes. They are a very shy people and do not wish to be photographed. Stella saw one man that was plowing his field using one of the huge draft horses, but when she tried to take his picture, he lowered his face to show only his hat.

It was a long way over to the Grand Bend park, but we made it. The park is a very basic park with short term trailer parking on grass with the utilities behind and all were back-in sites. There is a dump station to get rid of wastes and many long-term sites. They have a swimming pool, putt-putt golf, and a tennis court for exercise for their guests. The roads into the park are good, and my only complaint is the distance it is to everything. This could have been from the route that my GPS gave me for getting there, but even on our way out, it's still a long way.

We continued on our ride and ended up in Shipshewana. This is a very picturesque area with a large Amish population on their wagons and buggies. We went into the Essenhauf restaurant to get something to drink and possibly a piece of pie but it was lunch time so we weren't able to get a table. We left and came back home for the rest of the afternoon.

Judy called and asked if we wanted to go eat with them about 6 o;clock. We did, and met them at Lux restaurant. As usual, the food was good and we all left full and happy. It was still raining so we didn't sit out tonight but came inside. The weather has been good all week, but a little cool at times and it has rained a couple of times. It was about 65 degrees tonight, and with the dampness, it was very cool.

Bob and Pat came out later with their new puppy Trevor, a little 13 pound Yorkie. He is very cute, but Bob was having a test of wills with him over walking on a leash. I'm glad its them with the new puppy and not us.

So long for now.