Cross Country

June 1 - 8, 2008

We have begun our cross country trip with Susan and Bob. Although not traveling together, we met up the first night at the Walmart parking lot in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. The trip was just under 400 miles and the New England, New York and Pennsylvania roads we traveled were awful! When we got on Route 80 in Pennsylvania though that all changed and we had smooth sailing to Bloomsburg.

The next day we had a much more comfortable trip on Route 80 through Pennsylvania. However, once we hit Ohio, the roads again were bumpy and full of potholes. Perhaps the same politicians handle the roads in New England and Ohio!!

Our next stop is Thousand Trails - Kenisee Lake.

Kenisee Lake is 12 miles south of Lake Erie. Lake Erie is the eleventh largest lake in the world. It is the fourth largest of the Great Lakes in surface area (9,910 square miles) and the smallest by volume. Lake Erie is also the shallowest of the Great Lakes with an average depth of 62 feet. We spent a morning in Geneva-on-the-Lake, a tourist town whose season begins the weekend after we leave. All the restaurants and little shops along the main street were just getting ready to open but we did find a couple to browse through and an old house down a small side street that was converted into a restaurant for lunch.

We visited the town park and went to the lake's edge to skip stones, just like kids!! When leaving we found this oak tree that had actually grown over the original "rest room" sign.

Thursday morning we parted ways with Susan and Bob and traveled to Elkhart, Indiana where we stayed at Elkhart Campground. Elkhart is the RV Capital of the United States. For that reason, I thought there would be a lot of dealers and a lot of motorcoaches to see, but surprisingly most of the dealers sell fifth wheels.

We did a factory tour at the Monaco Motorcoach plant. For some reason they wouldn't allow cameras in the factory itself...probably afraid we'd steal some of their ideas. It is interesting to see how much goes into the building of one of these rv's. You can somewhat understand their high cost (I did say "somewhat understand"!) Ken spoke with one of the workers in the plant...things have slowed down quite a bit, just like everything else in the country. This particular plant now manufactures approximately 50 coaches per week, where in the past when the market was good, that number quadrupled.

Anyway, we've now seen more or less how these things are made...don't have to do that again. Another checkmark on our list.

We also spent about an hour at the MH/RV Hall of Fame Museum. The Museum is only a year old and although what was there was interesting, it is still a work in progress. We saw some of the old pop-up campers, travel trailers and motor homes. It was one way of letting us know how lucky we are with our current coach and we shouldn't have to look any further for more luxury!!

You will see from the picture of the fountain above that it is a very windy day. Along with the wind it has been hot and humid. And, we are once again under a severe storm warning with the possibility of tornados. I wonder what I do to attract these tornadoes the way I do??!!

Saturday was a very eventful day traveling. We got to see Lake Michigan from I-90 on the "south side of Chicago", we passed U.S. Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, and we traveled 90 extra miles to avoid the possibility of severe thunderstorms with chance of tornados (again!!). The weather was really quite severe...at one time we were in a rest area and joined others in the visitor's center concrete building waiting for the worst (at that time) to pass. We ended up the day at the Walmart parking lot in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, north of the storms still going on in Central and Southern Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana (where we had just come from). I'm really beginning to think it's me.