If it's sunny...if the temperature is over 95*...if the humidity is close to the temperature...if school's out...then it must be the time for a family adventure!  Somehow, it's become a "tradition."  It never fails that whenever or wherever we schedule an outing or trip with our daughter and her family, the weather turns into the "hottest day of the summer."  Tuesday August 1st met all the qualifications as we headed to Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois.  We were there when the park opened at 10am and we closed it down at 10pm.  In between we rode lots of rides - some of them more than once - and spent a good part of the afternoon in the water park section.  We each had our likes and dislikes so our groups were constantly changing and heading off in different directions.  Even the water in the wave pool was about 90*.  It was a great day, and worth the 2-hour trip from Winnebago.  Grandma and Grandpa, however, passed up an outing the very next day to Magic Waters in Rockford, letting Ann, Matt and the girls explore there on their own, while we recovered in air-conditioned comfort.

It was time for another day trip with the granddaughters on Monday, August 7.  As we travel, we often check for places of interest in the book "Watch It Made in the USA" which lists factory tours.  We had discovered that General Motors in Janesville, Wisconsin offered tours of their SUV assembly plant.  The Chrysler plant where Ann works in Belvidere, Illinois does not offer tours.  So, we made the 45 minute trip to Janesville and took the one hour tram tour.  It was quite interesting and we were able to show the girls the type of work that Mommy does.  A very pleasant retiree drove us around and narrated each step of the production.  We saw the amazing robots assemble their parts with the push of a button, often lifting and dropping heavy parts in just the right spot.  Our only complaint was that we would have liked to have taken more time watching each process.   And there were no free samples of Yukons or Denalis.  :-(    But now we can imagine what Ann does when she heads off to work making the Dodge Caliber and the Jeep Compass and Patriot.  The  GM plant itself was originally built in the early 1900's as a tractor plant.  Half was later taken over by Fisher Body and half by General Motors.  During W.W.II it was an ammunition factory.  Fisher Body and GM combined operations and union workers to create today's single line assembly contained in the factory on the original wooden floor.     Later that evening we celebrated Coffey's 9th birthday and Grandpa's birthday as well.
 
 

"The Tornado" at Six Flags - Ann and Matt say its quite a ride!  We opted for the "Wave Pool" in the foreground.	Merrick cooled off on the back of a turtle in the kid's park.	They wouldn't allow cameras on the inside, so this is our momento of the tour to watch them make the Yukon and Denali in the largest GM plant under one roof in the US - 3.5 million sq. feet.	Coffey blowing out her 9 candles.....where have the years gone?

The Forest City Queen is an excursion boat that gives ride up and down the Rock River in Rockford, IL.   Mary and Ann took the girls on an outing one afternoon to see the city-scape from the river and enjoyed seeing the parks and beautiful homes.  Meanwhile, back at our home at the Winnebago County Fairgrounds, the workers were working very hard to get ready for the county fair.  Huge tents appeared, rides were being assembled, fields were mowed, repainting begun.  The RV parking area was marked with orange paint, squeezing about 25 spaces into what had been 16...pretty narrow!  And time for us to get out of the way!  On Friday, August 11 we had the girls for their last "overnight" while both Ann and Matt were working.   Early on Saturday morning we headed to the football fields in Winnebago where Close's team had a scrimmage at 9am and Coffey's had a game at 10:15.  Both girls gave the boys a "run for their money."  Matt and Ann had joined us for the games and afterwards we went to lunch.  Then it was time for us to be "movin' on."  School would be starting for the girls in just ten days....hard to believe that we have spent most of their summer with them..and enjoyed every minute of it (well, except for a few during long drives in the car!)
 
 

The Forest City Queen on the Rock River in Rockford.	Coffey heading for a touchdown.	Close carries the ball while her team defends her.	Its been a great summer...we'll miss you guys!

We gave out the last hugs and headed north from Winnebago County, Illinois into Wisconsin to start our round-about drive to southern Arizona (It should take us about two months the way we travel!)  Our first stop in Wisconsin was the town of Wisconsin Dells.  We'd heard a lot about the area, but had never been there.  We checked into the American RV Park for two nights and set out to explore.  What we found lived up to its label..."The Waterpark Capital of the World."  There certainly are a lot of waterparks there...inside and outside, big and little.  In between are some "adventure parks" with rides and mini-golf, live theaters, plenty of restaurants and hotels, shopping opportunities, and the famous boat rides in and out of the rocky gorges along the Wisconsin River and Lake Delton.  Actually, all we did was gather information and "stake out a plan" for a trip next summer with the grandkids, comparing campgrounds and attractions and touring the city.  It was fun, however, just to see families having a great time.      From Wisconsin Dells we moved back down the road just a few miles to the town of Baraboo and parked at the Ho-Chunk Casino.  There we took advantage of free overnight parking, their $5 buffet, and came away from the Blackjack tables with a few extra dollars.  In Baraboo, the original winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus, we checked out the Circus World Museum - another planned adventure for the grandkids.

Our next stop was Warrens, Wisconsin....a small town in the center of the state and the heart of the state's cranberry industry.  We learned a lot at the Wisconsin Cranberry Discovery Center.  Somehow we always pictured cranberries as growing in the east, but the state of Wisconsin produces two-thirds of the nation's cranberry crop.  We also always pictured them as growing in swampy bogs, but that is a little removed from the truth.  What we learned is that the berries grow on perennial vines, close to the ground, much like grapes growing on "ground cover."  The fields are irrigated in hot weather, and watered if frost is imminent while the berries are still on the vine.  The fields are flooded to ease harvest in October because the berries will float and then can be mechanically pulled from the vines.  The fields are then drained and in winter about 12 inches of water is let into the fields so that there will be a good layer of ice formed.  When the ice is solid, dump trucks distribute a layer of sand on the fields which will help the vines grow straight when the ice melts and the growing season begins in the spring.  We could see fields of berries as we drove into Warrens...they look just like fields of weeds.  But, we do enjoy the tangy berries!

Sparta, Wisconsin is the "bicycle capital of the world."  Here we stopped to visit the "Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bike Museum."  It's sort of a strange combination, but we enjoyed our time there.  A four-hundred mile bicycle path has been built across the state of Wisconsin using former railroad right-of-way.  The trail starts near the town of Sparta.  At one time there were some major bike manufacturers in the area as well.  The museum has quite a collection of bikes ranging from the earliest models to current ones.  Deke Slayton was an Air Force test pilot and in 1959 was chosen as one of the original seven Mercury NASA astronauts.  He was born and raised in Sparta and returned there regularly over the years.  Just three months before his scheduled space flight in 1962, Slayton was barred from space flight because of a heart murmur.  He continued to train with the astronauts, was given major responsibilities with the program and was later cleared to fly again - going into space as a pilot on the first  international manned mission known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1972.  He had refused to give up his dream to fly in space.  Interestingly, his widow received a citation from authorities in California claiming that Slayton had violated regulations while flying his plane at a time cited six hours after his death...spooky!

Then it was on to La Crosse.  We found the world's largest six-pack just outside the City Brewing Company.  City Brewing is in the former Heilman Brewing Company facilities and is owned by 12 investors who bought the company several years ago when it was having financial difficulties.  The company is now doing well and we toured their computer controlled brewhouse and sampled some of their products in the hospitality room.  Much of the company's business is producing products for other labels, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, including Mike's Hard Lemonade, AriZona Iced Tea and several different kinds of energy drinks.  Some of the old copper brewing kettles were sold to help the cash flow several years back but some are maintained to let visitors see the difference between those and the gleaming stainless steel ones built in 1982.
 
 

This Trojan Horse is supposed to be one of the largest in the world...it is at the Mt. Olympus Theme Park in Wisconsin Dells, WI and has a rollercoaster track running through it.	A cutting from a cranberry vine showing that the berries are just beginning to turn red in mid-August.  Some of the berries are harvested now for "white cranberry juice."	Tom decided against trying to ride the "high wheeler" bike out in front of the "Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bike Museum" in Sparta, Wisconsin.	The "World's Largest Six Pack" is at the City Brewing Company in La Crosse, WI.  It holds 688,200 gallons of beer.  The several glasses we tasted have probably been replaced by now.

We celebrated our son Reid's birthday, August 17, even though he wasn't with us,  by making two more tourist stops.  The first was at the SPAM Museum in Austin, MN.  The Hormel Company has a very nice, free museum with great exhibits all about their infamous luncheon meat.  We saw lots of entertainment and advertising clips taking SPAM from its beginnings to the present day.  SPAM is made and sold in countries around the world.  We even had a free bite or two.  Stop number two was in Blue Earth, MN at the home of "The Jolly Green Giant."  In fact, he was our security guard overnight as we camped for free at the Faribault County Fairgrounds where he stands overlooking the countryside.  Blue Earth is also the spot where the eastbound sections and westbound sections of I-90 were joined together when I-90 was first completed in 1978...they put gold paint in the concrete.  While in Blue Earth we also stopped by the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church which was built in 1872 and is still standing and unaltered in construction.  It has beautiful Swiss-made stained glass windows installed in 1881 and the original pews.   Just before we left Minnesota, we drove north from I-90 to the town of Pipestone.  At the Pipestone National Monument we spent some time in the Visitor Center and learned about the Indian natives of the area that for years have hand-mined a red quartz stone they call "pipestone" and then carve it to make the traditional peacepipes.  They also make beautiful jewelry from the stone.  There are several native carvers working at the visitor center and they were eager to share their craft and their stories.  There is also a walking trail into the prairie to see some of the hand-dug quarries which now go to a depth of 17ft, but a fierce rainstorm appeared just as we were ready to hit the trail, so we had to pass.        Continuing our trek to the west on I-90 we arrived in Mitchell, South Dakota for a three night stay.  The first night we parked at the Cabela's store.  Comparing it to the store in Dundee, MI where we have stayed often, this store was a bit smaller with smaller displays of wildlife.   The two stores opened about the same time.  The Mitchell store has separate lost for RVs and trucks, and by early evening there were about 20 RV rigs in the RV lot, with quite a few more in the Wal-Mart lot across the street.   The next morning we drove into town to check out the campgrounds and found R & R Campground behind the Super 8 Motel to be a very nice Passport America park.  We moved the rig there for two more nights so that we could visit Mitchell's famous Corn Palace.  And what a place the Corn Palace is!  Basically it is just a big building with a basketball floor inside.  But in 1892 the locals started decorating the outside of the first Corn Palace with huge murals made out of corn.  Twelve different colors of corn are grown to make the murals which are designed and planned by a local artist.  The murals are drawn on roofing paper and color coded.  Then the paper is hung on the walls and the various colors of corn cobs are cut in half and nailed in place.  Borders and backgrounds are made with various native grasses.  The theme and murals are changed once a year...except when the special corn crop fails, which we are told it did this year,  and in years past during the war and the depression.  The inside walls around the arena also are covered with murals.  Quite "A-maize-ing" as they say in Mitchell.
 
 

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws