July 14th - Indiana & Lake Michigan

The Studebaker Museum in South Bend, IN has a wide assortment of Studebaker vehicles ranging from an 1857 Phaeton coach through the last model runs of the company. I remember driving my parents Studebaker Larks.

One of my favorites is the 1932 President Convertible Coupe.

The 1951 Commander used in the Muppet Movie was there in all its dilapidated glory.

We took the South Bend Chocolate Factory tour. This would have been a better tour if we arrived on a workday instead of Saturday. After the tour, Mary and I both questioned their sanitary practices after watching one kid LICK the glass partition repeatedly. The tour guide didn’t know how to deal with this and only said, “isn’t that cute” with a bit of a frown. The parents didn’t understand her meaning and let the kid keep licking.

We drove over to the Indiana Dunes National Shoreline to touch our forth of the five great lakes -- Lake Michigan. We spent the afternoon enjoying the beach along with a number of other people.

We arrived at our friend Lynea for dinner and a nice visit. We were finally able to meet Lynea’s husband Craig, their grandson, Kaleb, and their puppy, Max. We camped in their driveway for the night.

July 13th - Kendallville, IN

The lighting bugs provided the evenings entertainment at Bixler Lake Park and passing trains provided background sounds throughout the night. We both slept well into the late morning. Just a typical down day.

The Noble County Fair is just a short distance from our camp. The livestock entered include cattle, cows, a few horses, hogs, alpaca and lamas. Assorted chickens, ducks, and rabbits were also represented. They have an Old Time Gas and Steam display but we didn’t see any steam engines. There were a couple stationary gas engines but most entries were tractors from the 1920’s thru 1950’s, some completely restored and other in original condition.

We watched and listened to the auctioneer for a while. We both kept our hands in our pockets out of fear that we might be forced to take a cow home with us and there isn’t that much room in the Roadtrek.

We had the worst Italian Sausage sandwich ever. Six dollars got something served on hotdog roll with very little grill onions, a bland sauce, and the sausage had very little flavor. The 4-H club had the best bargain with their large cups of soft serve ice cream for a dollar.

A couple of kids had a few beagle pups they were trying to find homes for. I thought Mary would be taking one home with her.

The new Kendallvale Library is fantastic. It has an open floorplan with good spacing of their bookshelves. Also, the bookshelves are not over 4-feet tall providing easily accessed for everyone. They have a nicely furnished computer lab and WiFi is available throughout the building. An area that resembles a living room, including sofa, chairs, and fireplace is provided for everyone’s comfort. We spent more than an hour relaxing in comfortable chairs while we used their WiFi and read newspapers and periodicals.

More people arrived at the campground in the late afternoon but there were still plenty of spaces available. The campground has paved internal roads but the entire camping area is grass. Electric & water utility towers are scattered throughout the grassy camping area. We didn’t notice any site numbers. You just park where you want and run your electrical cord to the nearest utility tower.

July 12 – Cereal, Cars, and more cars

We had a comfortable night at the Walmart in Jackson, MI. Lady Luck was smiling again when she provided an open WiFi connection in the parking lot. We were able to research travel options, check email, and read about world news without having to leave the comfort of our Roadtrek to search out a WiFi hotspot. This is the first night in some time that we haven’t had rain.

I woke a couple times during the night and found we were just about the only car and definitely the only RV in the parking lot. Many times we find a lot of traffic in and out of Walmart Superstores regardless of the time of day. Not this night.

When I was a kid, I sent much of my allowance to Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, Michigan for just about everything they offered for just a box top and 25-cents. So, we just had to stop at Kellogg’s Cereal City in Battle Creek. Kellogg built Cereal City in order to keep tourists’ interest when they no longer offered factory tours. We had read that it was no longer open, which is true, but we had to see what the build was like. It seemed a little like what Hershey did in Pennsylvania. We didn’t like the Hershey thing and I’m sure we wouldn’t of like Cereal City but I wish we would have had the chance to experience our dislike.

Our next stop was Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, MI. We didn’t know what to expect and since this was just one day after seeing The Henry Ford Museum, our expectations weren’t high. But, were we surprised at the cars housed in the barns and out buildings among the farmlands of Michigan. Nearly 200 classic gas, steam, and electric cars were housed in 6 buildings. Muscle cars, luxury cars, prototype and true horseless carriages were represented. There was even an extensive collection of hood ornaments. Kiddy cars were hung on the wall around one building. Some of these were really old because I remember having one just like one that was on their wall.

The car “staring” in Walt Disney’s “The Gnome-Mobile” and the set used in film Gnomes were nicely presented.

Our last stop was the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, IN. This museum is housed in the renovated and converted administrative and engineering building of the Auburn Motorcar Company. More than 100 Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg cars are housed in the two levels of this building. Most have been restored but a few are unrestored. Of the unrestored, most are in amazing condition and a few will take enormous effort for their restoration. Each car had its ownership history, specifications, year and model displayed. We found the ownership history a real plus. This museum was a ”Duesy”

Both of these museums are rated at AAA Gems and we agree. We said this was turning into a Plane, Train, and Automobile vacation before we spent the past two days in three fantastic museums. These museums have only confirmed that to be the case.

We are camping at the Bixler Lake Campground in Kendallville, IN. It’s reasonably priced with electricity and showers. We decided to spend two nights here so we can have a little time to relax and catch our breath. We passed the country fair grounds on the way to camp and saw the Fair was in full swing. We’ll probably spend some time their tomorrow. I can almost taste the Italian Sausage and Pepper sandwich.

July 11th - The Henry Ford Museum

If the Smithsonian Museum is referred to as America’s Closet then surely The Henry Ford Museum has to be America’s Garage. I only wish they were holding a garage sale. Even they were, I couldn’t afford anything they have. It’s all priceless.

We spent the entire day at "The Ford". Not only do they have a vast collection of cars but also have old steam and gas engines, industrial machinery, and household appliances. One area documents America’s industrial development from the early 1800’s thru modern times.

The car collection is amazing. From the earliest steam, electric, and gas cars all the way to cars of the 60’s are presented. They have a 1952 Oscar Mayer Weinermobile,

the RV Charles Kuralt used in the “On The Road” series,

the presidential limousine that President Kennedy was riding in when he was shot in Dallas, and the bus that Rosa Parks was riding when arrested is also housed here. You can sit inside that very bus.

It wasn’t crowded and the item are well spaced giving a very open feeling. There was things for kids to do, including yours truly, like making paper airplanes. They have an area to test fly your creations.

We are hanging out at a Panera in Jackson, MI waiting till later before pulling into a Walmart for the evening.

July 10th – Across Ontario

We managed to get thru Canadian Customs without much of a wait. We arrived at the Roadtrek Factory in Kitchener about 1-1/2 hours before our tour was to start. This gave us plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast.

The GPS pointed us to Oscar’s Restaurant only a few miles away. I had Hash with Eggs. The hash was prepared with lightly corned beef that was sliced then shredded. Mary had her eggs with Peameal Bacon . We found out that Peameal bacon is side bacon. Kind of like Canadian bacon in the states but this was thicker and had a very good flavor.

The Roadtrek factory tour was great. It took more than two hours to cover all the steps that go into making one of these vans. Sorry, no pictures. Roadtrek’s 135 employees turn out about 500 vans per month but their backlog keeps growing since the price of gas climbed over $2.50 per gallon. A few years ago they were able to build vans for dealer inventory. Now, they only built-to-order because the demand is so great.

We showed our guide, Tupper, the mods we made to our van and he called out one of the engineers to look at the sliding shelves. We may see that feature in vans some day.

Crossing back into the US at the Port Huron entry was also easy. Cars were routed separately. The truck line had many trucks whereas the car line had few and moved quickly.

We camped at Lakeport State Campground located a few miles north of Port Huron. It cost $31 because we have to pay an out of state entry fee of $8 just to enter the park. At least we were able to touch our third Great Lake… Lake Huron. Only two more lakes to go.

Tornado warnings were issued for northeast of here. We had high winds and rain showers. A small branch blow down from a tree and hit the window on the top of the van with a thunderous bang.

July 9th - Niagara Falls

Today’s tour to the American side was great. The high point was taking the Maid of the Mist boat to the bottom of Horseshoe Falls. It was wet and wild. The boat operators didn’t over crowd the boats so we had room to move and had a good viewing positions.

We also walked down to the bottom of the American Falls. The sound and feel of the water so near to the bottom of the falls is incredible.

The worst thing we attended was a film called something like the “Legend of the Falls”. This is hyped as a 4-D movie. A little bit of water is sprayed from the ceiling while we watched the screen with 3-D glasses. The entire movie was just a bunch of video effects to showing 3-D with Niagara Falls in the background. I can’t believe they would try to get people to pay $9.95 to watch this crap if it wasn’t included in a tour package. Not one person on our tour had a positive thing to say about it.

The two tours we took were worth the money. We saw all the things we wanted and had a fair amount of time at each stop. Our tour guide was able to get us into the head of the line at each attraction and we didn’t have to find parking, which could have been a major problem. Many lots were full.

WiFi at this KOA is worthless. When we made our reservation we asked if they had WiFi and if is was working. They said yes. It hasn’t been working more than a couple minutes before it stops. I asked at the office about it this morning and they said it hasn’t been working for more than two weeks. Also, they won’t call professional help in to resolve their problems.

July 8th – Erie Canal and Niagara Falls

With little sleep, we started on a very full day. First off, we needed to find a place to touch Lake Erie. We arrived at Woodlawn Park at around 7am. There was no one to greet us at the entry, so we quickly parked in an empty parking lot, nearly ran across the beach to the water, took a couple quick pictures, and left before anyone else arrived. We never did find out if there was an admission or parking fee.



We stopped for breakfast at Tom’s in Lockport. They have a normal breakfast menu in a funky little joint.


In Lockport, we took the 1-hour cruise in the Erie Canal and passed thru two of its locks. The canal is not the one we read about in history books. No mules are left and the original canal has been expanded and the old locks replaced with bigger ones. It no longer serves a commercial propose and is used almost exclusively for pleasure boating. We saw several boats that may have come up from Florida along the Inland Passage.

Still, remains of the original canal and locks are visible and we could only imagine what a great accomplishment building the original canal was using only man and animal power.







It started to rain during the last 20-minutes of the cruise. We are growing accustom to rain in the afternoon. Everyone moved to the shelter of the lower deck leaving Mary and I alone to wander around the upper deck as we pleased.



The Herschell Carrousel Museum is also located in Lockport. This is a nice museum housed in one of the original Herschell manufacturing buildings. We both think the New England Carrousel Museum has a wider range of carrousel horses and better displays but this museum does have an operating carrousel that we both rode twice.



We drove to Niagara Falls, NY and stopped at visitors’ information. After discussing all the options, we bought tickets for two tours. Tonight, we are going on the nighttime Canada side tour and tomorrow the American side. With so little time and so many things to see, these tours seemed like the best way for us to see everything we wanted.

We checked into the KOA-Niagara campground and barely had two hours before our first tour bus was schedule to pick us up at 5:45PM. The campground doesn't seem to be all that busy. I'd estimate more than one-half of the sites sit empty. It does offer free wifi but I don't know how much time I'll have to enjoy that benefit.

Our Grayline tour stopped at three locations: the Horseshoe Falls viewing platform where we could see that fall from above and below. It was interesting seeing the Maid of the Mist boat and thinking we would be on it tomorrow.


Second stop was the Niagara River Whirlpool. Our final stop was the Skylon tower where we saw the falls illuminated from the top of the tower. This isn't a good place to observe the illuminated falls. The distance is too great and the crowds made it difficult to get a good viewing point.

Of course, a stop at Souvenir City was slip into their itinerary.

It was well after 11pm when we finally got back to our Roadtrek. Tired but happy that we could see everythings we wanted. This was a good tour and our tour guide, Al, was entertaining. We wished we could have spent a little more time at some places and less time at others but all things considered, the tour worked out well for us.

We were glad we had our passport along. This made getting into Canada and back into the US very easy. We were told that crossing the border is easier on a tour bus than in a private vehicle. It will be interesting to see how that process works when we are driving thru Canada in the Roadtrek and not on a tour bus.