Michigan so far

Wow, have we been busy.  The days we've had free so far have been filled with laundry, grocery shopping, or just resting.  We have seen so much and the bus tours have been eight or ten hours long.  So now I'll send some pictures.

Before the tour started we drove up to Hell, MI for lunch.

This is the tavern we had lunch in. The town is tiny, but it has two bars. 

The first day of the tour we went to Greenfield Village and The Ford Museum.  

We took the train around the village first.

After we walked through the village we went to the museum.  This a presidential limo.  The have several from Ike to Reagan.

The next day we toured Jiffy Mix factory

To go in the factory we had to cover our hair.  Dad has more hair than most.

We toured a restored theater in Ann Arbor after driving through Michigan University.

This is the Motown Museum.  Our guide was really great.  

Then we went up to Lansing and toured the capitol.

The is the governor when Bev and I were born. I can't remember his name, but I think it was Kelly.

We also drove through Michigan State.  This is the dairy part of MSU and we got some Ice Cream.  Yum

Here we are in Grand Rapids where the Oldsmobile was/is made.

This is the logo of Body by Fisher from back in the day.

We toured a OLD house that is a museum now.

We took a buggy ride through some dunes near Grand Rapids.

This is a Frank Lloyd Wright House.

We went to the Fred Myjer Gardens.  It has a Chuly in the lobby.

The gardens are beautiful.

As well as the art

In Holland, MI we saw wooden shoes being made.

This lady is hand painting a Delft jar.

I told you your dad has big feet.

This is a sign at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore.

You can walk out over the dunes and see Lake Michigan.

People really go down and then try hard to climb back up.  If you get into trouble the Coast Guard comes out to save you for $750.  Oops.

We had some Moomers ice cream and it is as good as Ben and Jerry's. It's local and you can only get it around here.

Now we are in Sault  Ste Marie.  We took a dinner trip on Ste. Mary's River last night.  We got to go through the locks to bypass the rapids.

Here we are in the lock going one way.  We went through two different ones.  Very interesting

This the campground we are staying in at the moment.

Today we got in the viewing ramp and watched the locks from the outside.

It took about 20 minutes to watch the ferry rise.  I was intrigued. 

That's enough of the "book"  and we only have about 10 days left.  More later.

Love, Mom and Dad

our tour begins

We haven't got any pictures since the last post.  We've been busy getting to Michigan.  We got here yesterday and it's been raining on and off since we left the Dayton, Ohio area.  Our tour starts tomorrow afternoon with a meet and greet luncheon.  I plan on taking tons of pictures while here.  I'll try to make new post at least once a week.

That's all for today.  Love, Mom and Dad

Sightseeing in New England

We spend a few hours in Bar Harbor.  It's on the same island as Acadia National Park.  

In the park is a lighthouse that is still being used.  The view from here in photos don't do it justice.

We travelled to Booth Bay the next day.  It is a tiny little town that has tons of Gift shops. We spent 3 days here just wondering.

That is a huge house out on that spit.

Our next stop was Kennebunkport, where we looked for Walker's Point.  George H.W. Bush lives out on the beautiful point.  Live is hard.  I can see why he was ready to get here after he lost Barbara.

This sailboat is a floating café.

The town sign is quite quaint.  I really like it here better than the other little town in New England. We couldn't find a parking spot on Sunday, so we just drove around the area.  We went back on Monday and got a spot, but one hour later people couldn't find many empty places.  We ate a lot of seafood while we were in Maine.  The only thing is lobster is getting expensive here.  What is this world coming to???

We are here in Massachusetts at Old Sturbridge Village. There are costumed people all over the town.  It is suppose to be 1830's or so. These ladies are dying yarn like back in the day.

Livestock  Look at the horns.  We saw sheep and chickens roaming free.  The chickens not the sheep.

Here is a printer doing demo.  There tons of 5th graders in the park today and they were having a ball.  They were asking some pretty good questions.

The sound from this gunshot is very loud and made me jump every time he shot his gun.  It was at least ten times.

This guy makes shoes.  Someone told us that a pair of these shoes would cost $1.00 back then.

The potter

And the blacksmith

We spend all day here.  It was really interesting talking to actors here.  I took tons of pictures, but I am only sending a few.  I don't want to bore anyone.  

We leave in the morning and will head toward Michigan.  We should be there by the 23.  We plan on not doing too much between here and there so we'll be fresh when our tour starts.  

I guess that is all for tonight.  More later.

Love Mom and Dad

Acadia National Park

We had a picnic lunch yesterday in Acadia.  We ate left over KFC and after we cleaned up our mess a pair of crows came down to the table to make sure we had done a good job. 

We saw three beaver lodges in this pond.  Hence the nickname busy beaver.

This is Sandy Beach.  Lots of folks visit here in the summer.

Guess who?

This is Thunder Hole.  At high tide the water comes flying up those steps and wets anyone down.

This is Jordan's Pond.  There is a tea room on this lake that serves Popovers that are suppose to be great.  We were too full from lunch to try one.

We went up to the top of Cadillac Mt.  It's 1500 feet high.

People climb all over the rocks up here.  We didn't because it looked rather slick.

The coast up here is all rocky

The green plants in the foreground are blueberries.

The clouds started coming in while we were on the Schoodic Peninsula.  This is a small part of Acadia that isn't in the main park that is on an island.

Out on the tip of Schoodic you can see the open ocean.  It was 56 out here on the point and very windy.  Brrrr

There is an old navy base here that has become a research center.  One of the streets has a familiar name.  It seems he was the architect for T. Roosevelt to make a wagon road with bridges etc. for the people to use back in 1916. We took the horse drawn  wagon tour the last time we were here in 2012.

We've had a really good time here so far.  We plan on a day off tomorrow and just hang out.  

We're here until Wednesday and head off the Booth Bay for awhile. More later.

Love, Mom and Dad

Graduation and some of New England

You probably have better pictures than I got, but I wanted to share.  The whole university did the ceremony in the pouring rain.  Mark and family were soaked to the skin. We were lucky for Ella's college graduation because it had stopped raining and the sun was shining.

There is all of us at one spot.

And the rest of us were where Mark could get good photos. The young woman next to Sheila is Courtney White, Ella's partner.

Meema and Papa with the woman of the hour. 

And here we are the whole family.  Mendy looks short here because we are standing on a hill.  It looks like Ella and I are as tall as Papa and taller than Mendy.  Hee hee

We left Vermont on the 24 of May and drove to NH.  While there we visited  a bunch of places we had seen six years before.  This is a view is the White Mts.

Another view of the mountains.  We drove along the Kancamagus Highway for about 35 miles. It was so quiet up there and beautiful.

The Mountains are about 4000 feet and covered with trees.  Wow

The Swift River runs along the Highway.  I caught some people playing in the falls.

We are in Maine now and will be here for about two weeks before we start for Michigan.  The rush trip to Vermont was worth it to see Ella (Helena) so very happy. And so grown-up.  Our girl has done it.

More next time.  Love Mom nd Dad

Tennessee

The rain in Nashville made us very wet while we went to pick up our tickets for the show Saturday night.

We saw Crystal Gale.  Her hair isn't as lush as it use to be.

And we saw Charlie Pride.  It was a great show.  We were on the radio live.  Woo Hoo.  We saw several other stars as well.  Nancy Grace even did some commercials for the radio.

I can't figure how to flip this shot around.  I thought I had it when I down loaded it.  Anyway we went to Bush's Bake Bean Visitor Center.  It was fun and we got our picture made there. I next to Duke.  We also had lunch at their café.  Yum

Today we went The Great Smokie Mt.

The trees are tall and the waterfalls are unique.

Mendy, you and Mike could walk some of the 800 miles of trails.  Or you could hike the Appalachian Trail to Maine.  

Your dad walked up about 30 steps to over look the Newfound Gap.  I didn't because it would hurt my knees coming down.

This is the view from the highest point in the park.  It's called Clingman's Dome. While we were up here we were in NC.  The park is in two states. It was 56 up here and after we got back down to our campground it was 80. 

The park has several cabins that they keep up.  I read that there is over 80 homesteads in the park.  These people were all bought out to make the park. The only sad thing about this park is that a good 50%  of the trees are dead.  Up high it's Doug Firs, and down lower it's Hemlock.  It is some pest called woolly adelgid.  

We leave for Virginia in the morning.  Your dad has had a restful two days.  And we only have 230 miles to go tomorrow.

Our first week on the road

We are in Nashville for today and tomorrow.  We are going to the Grand Ole Opry tonight.  The headliner is Charlie Pride.  The last time we were here The Opry was dark the two nights we stayed.  This morning is kinda' weird.  We don't have to get up and put everything away to get ready to go.  There has been only one other day so far.  We did laundry, big whoop! Your dad reminded me that we have only one other time before Vermont for a one-nighter.  We out ran the rain pretty much so far until early this morning.  The rain caught up with us.  It's been raining about 8 hours now.  But that's alright because we don't have to go out in it except to go to the Opry tonight.

These are the only pictures I took while we traveled.  We're at Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, Ark.  You can see our view from our rig.  We had a lightning storm while we were there, but it only lasted a few minutes.  It sure was loud.  It sounded like the strikes were very near.

There was one row of RV's in front of us but we could still see the river and the huge barges going up and down the river.

As you can see we didn't unhitch the Honda at all, that is until we got here to Two Rivers RV about two miles from the Opry.

That's all for this week.  Will have more later on.

Love, Mom and Dad