Days 22, 23 & 24 - October 7-9, I

 Some photos I didn't include earlier:

This is where I had one of the best, if the THE BEST, hamburgers that I have ever eaten. DeTour Village, UP, MI

My brother-in-law Ed took me along when he went to sell their pickup full of walnuts. Below is a photo of walnut hulls being conveyed out to pile. The machine that dehulled them was all enclosed. Also, I didn't want to take photos of any of the Amish folks running the walnut operation.

Day 22 - We travelled from Mom's to Indy. The "campground' we stayed at was an old trailer court next to the Indy speedway. The bleachers you see are seating at the track. As we were setting up we heard an Indycar fire up and head out onto the track, and then it started to rain. The driver didn't manage to make one lap. (Don't know who the driver was, we were told that Jimmy Johnson had been practicing Wednesday, trying to get qualified to run in next years Indy 500.) 

Georgetown Road, the street between the campground and the track ends at the south end of the speedway, about a block from where we were parked. I walked down and took a photo of the main entrance. We thought about visiting the Speedway Museum (I have been there, many years ago, but Kathy never had.) Ended up not going.

We had dinner with our oldest son, Doug, and his husband, at Dawson's in Speedway. It was good, but nothing to write home about.

Day 23 - Most of the time when we were at the "campground" Saturday we could hear two cars running laps at the track. 

We went to the renovated Coca Cola bottling plant. It sat vacant for years but is now an upscale hotel and office complex.

Hotel lobby.

Lobby ceiling looked like brass plates.

Looking along one wall of the building.

Lots of artwork on the walls.

Across the street was the garage. It also was renovated. A large portion of it is now a food court.

A redneck, window shopping.

I'm glad the place has been restored, but it is FAR to upscale for country folks a redneck country bumpkin like me.

In the afternoon we drove to Lebanon, where we used to live, about 25 miles NNW of Indy, to visit one of our neighbors. I sure miss the pole barn I build there and Kathy REALLY misses her kitchen that she had TOTALLY redone while we were there. We don't miss all the traffic.

Day 24 - Doug came by in the morning to bring me some Ekrich Smoky Links, you can't buy them in MO. I love them. (Lil Smokies are definitely not the same thing.) We had also purchased some earlier. Our freezer is now almost totally full of Smokies.

Then it was off to Vandalia, IL, about 180 miles. We drove US40 for maybe 160 miles of the distance. The road was better than the I70 in Indiana but the Illinois stretch was some of the worst US highway we have driven on, not as bad as the miles of Interstate we endured in Iowa and Wisconsin, but rougher than the US highways in MI & IN.

Vandalia is about half way between Indy & Centertown. I thought the campground I found online might be interesting for great-grandkids if we came this way with them some time. NOT! The Kaskaskia Dragon RV park is a patch of rock off the side of a city street. (There is a large steel dragon sculpture out front.) When I made the reservation the lady told me that they only had back-in sites. I told her that was okay as long as they were long enough so that I didn't have to unhook my truck for our overnight stay. Length wasn't a problem.

But the sites were so unlevel front/back (4 degrees) that I had to unhook and drop the front of the trailer to get it reasonably level.

After getting unhooked I connected to the campground electricity & water with no problems. Then I tried to hook up to the sewer connection, the inlet was higher than the discharge on our camper. I walked over to the "office" which is in a hardware store across the street, told them about the problem. I asked if they had a dump station I could use in the morning, since I couldn't dump on the sewer connection at the site. No dump station. The lady made a phone call to someone who didn't sound happy about having to come to the campground, but agreed to do so. About 10 minutes later a guy showed up and told me that if I would not have backed up so far the sewer connection would have worked. ( I didn't argue with him but it was obvious that even if I had parked the camper with the tongue sticking out into the city street it was doubtful that there would have been enough fall to drain the tanks, plus I didn't have 50' of sewer hose with me. I suggested that he cut the pipe and lower the inlet. He gruffly replied that he had planned to do so. He pulled the white coupling (just a light schedule PVC coupling, no threads, no glued joint) off the pipe and cut 3-4" off the pipe. He then pushed the coupling back on the pipe, no glue, no threads for our sewer connection, and left. The worst campground experience we have had in the past 4 years. (It was 88 degrees while we were setting up. The hottest temps we have experienced for weeks.

Live and learn, We know not to stop here in the future, and so will other campers after I post a review on a Internet.

Good night to all.

God is good, may He bless you and yours.