Along the Way to Osage

The RV park we stayed at in Minnesota, Hidden Bluffs, is in the heart of Amish country. You get sort of a clue before you ever see a buggy when you see the wide shoulders on the roads designed to separate horse traffic from motor vehicles. Then when you see horse "apples" along the tarmac, you know for sure.

This family was on their way to town in an open wagon --

This gentleman was driving an interesting buggy. I'm not sure if there was a removable panel in the back for air circulation on a hot day or?

I got a chuckle out of the antenna "farm" on top of the Osage water tower --

This is the Main Street of Osage Iowa. It doesn't look all that different than the Main Street of Ritzville, Washington where my Grandfather Lyman Haight ended up --

This was also a common sight along the way. There were lots of these huge windmill towers sitting right in amongst the fields of corn or soybeans. This one was right in the midst of the farmstead itself --

We spent a quiet day today. We voted our Primary ballots and got them into the mail (Washington State is entirely "vote-by-mail"). The campground owner was going to the post office to mail her bill payments and assured me our ballots would be postmarked today.

I really enjoyed my walk around the campground today. The owners must have quite a set of green thumbs. There are clusters of little flower gardens all over as well as a very good looking vegetable garden. Plants are one thing I really miss living full-time in our RV (Our AeroGarden has been displaced by the Keurig coffee maker...). I spent a bit of time pulling pigweed from the flower garden by Auntie Violet this morning and did get a bit of a gardening fix in...

Das Dutchman Essenhaus

It was hot when we went to bed last night. I actually ended up getting up and turning the air conditioner back on as even with the fans running, the open windows weren't cooling anything off. About one thirty major rumbling woke me up. The old story about the Norsemen playing ten pins in the sky came to mind as the heavens rumbled and roared. It wasn't like the usual thunderstorm where you have lightening and then loud booms. This was just a constant grumbling that lasted for several hours. Somewhere in there, it began to rain as well, finally cooling things down.

It was still raining when we got up this morning, but it was blissfully cool. The sky gradually cleared off and it began to get hot again about three in the afternoon.

Toward evening, we got in the Toad and drove the seventeen miles to Middlebury to Das Dutchman Essnhaus, an Amish style restaurant owned by Bob and Sue Miller.

I met Sue when I was first elected to serve on the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board. She was a veteran Board Member and a great mentor to a newbie. While their children have pretty much taken over the day-to-day management of the restaurant and conference center (as well as their other restaurant in Sarasota, Florida), the lady at the front desk says that Sue still comes in once a week or so.

We had some very good chicken pot pie for dinner and Forry splurged and had a piece of peanut butter chocolate banana cream pie for dessert.

And Now We Are in Ohio!

Fall is definitely in the air and it is also getting chillier.  After weeks of Indian Summer with daytime temperatures in the the high eighties and nineties, a cold front has come through with rain, wind and a definite drop in the temperature. We had been thinking about going up to Maine and then coming down the east coast to eventually winter in Florida.  Because of our detour for repairs, it is getting late in the year to head north without thinking about the possibility of snow...

My friend Cathi sent me a page and one-half note of lists of places to see and things to do in Maine (where she used to live) and New England.  I also had a list of some other places I wanted to see as well as visiting out friend Wayne in Waldoboro, Maine.  After we sat and talked about it for a while, we decided that we would wait until Spring to visit New England when we wouldn't have to sweat out bad weather. Then we would head back to Washington visiting North Dakota and Nebraska on the way.  We had been thinking about driving to Alaska next summer, but we have been there twice (by air) and that may not be a priority.

So, with that decision made, we headed south into Ohio today.  We stopped at a Welcome Center and chatted with the friendly fellow on duty.  When he found that we had never spent time in Ohio, he suggested we head towards Chillicothe (south of Columbus) and do some exploring in that area.

The country we drove through today was a little more open then where we had been in Indiana.  There are STILL lots of fields of soybeans and corn -- and corn and soybeans!

One thing I did notice -- the majority of the houses in Ohio are square!  They may have dormers like this one, or they may have a porch attached, but they are square.

This perfectly square building is a county courthouse we saw on the way --

We passed some Amish farms and furniture marts along the way and saw evidence of Amish buggies along the road.  The one buggy we saw had white stripes on the back instead of the orange "slow vehicle" triangle on the ones we saw in Indiana.

 It was NOT a nice day to be driving today.  The cold front that came through brought last night's rain, but also brought gusty winds all day! Highway 23 south is two-lane part of the way, so that meant for extra concentration as well.  We drove longer then we usually like to in order to get to Sun Valley Campground outside of Chilliclothe.  We got here about 6:30, just before dark.

Shipshewanna and a Table for Forry

We decided that we would stay on another day at the Elkhart Campground so that I could do some long overdue laundry and cleaning. Late this afternoon we went visit the Amish shops in Shipshewanna to see if we could find a small narrow table for Forry's computer. Shipshewanna is about 23 miles from here.  As we got closer, we began to see horses pulling Amish buggies trotting along on the shoulder. (Sorry about Toad's "buggy" windshield!)

There were multiple buggies tied up alongside one of the grocery stores.  It was interesting to see the juxtaposition of the grocery carts and the buggies --

The shod horses have worn a wide groove on the paved shoulders of the road --

We did find a neat table for Forry's laptop at the second store we checked.  Landmark Woods doesn't use credit cards.  We did not have enough cash to pay for it nor had we thought to bring a check.  The owner insisted that we take the table with us and mail him a check!  I offered him the hundred or so dollars I had in cash as a partial payment, but he wouldn't hear of it.  He gave me a stamped addressed envelope -- you can be sure it will be going back to him along with a check tomorrow morning! The table is a narrow Mission style with a small shelf on the bottom (already filled with TV controllers!) It's about 26 inches high, 24 inches long and 12 inches wide.  It's not cherry like the rest of Auntie Violet's cabinetry, but it doesn't look too bad.

We made a stop at Blue Gate Restaurant and Bakery for a slice of pie and a cup of coffee before we headed home to have leftovers for supper.