June 2005
It didn't seem like June...it turned cool and cloudy on June 1.  Our granddaughters' end-of-the-year school activities had to be indoors.  We had driven the rig from the Thousand Trails Preserve in Wilmington, OH back to Marysville, and frankly we were happy with cool weather as we have to park at the curb across from our daughter's house and have no hookups and must keep the slides pulled in.    We enjoyed attending Close's kindergarten program at Edgewood School, several of Coffey's softball games, and Grandma and Grandpa spent some time baby-sitting.        Friday, Saturday and Sunday, June 3-5, Tom had the opportunity to try out a new career...he attended Jack Nicklaus' Golf Tournament, "The Memorial," in Dublin, OH...but he never saw any golfing action.  From 6:30am to noon each day he helped our son-in-law, Matt,  BBQ cases and cases and more cases of brats, burgers, chicken breasts and hot dogs in a tent behind the hospitality area.  Tom has decided that he does not want to be a BBQ chef full-time!  Our daughter and son-in-law, along with Matt's brother and his wife, own Pottsie's BBQ.  They cook all their BBQ in a mobile cooker that they park outside their restaurant or can haul to another cooking location.  They had been hired by the contracted caterer at the golf tournament to help feed the 6000 people a day.
Meanwhile, back in Marysville, the rest of us, and joined by Tom and Matt in the afternoons and evenings, were packing up and cleaning out the Pottsie's BBQ restaurant building as they were moving the operation to Mount Vernon, OH.  Most of the decorations and cooking equipment were loaded into vans and trucks and moved to the new location by Sunday evening.  The new place passed all their inspections and opened for business on Tuesday, June 7.
On Sunday afternoon, after all the trucks were loaded at Pottsie's, we took our two youngest granddaughters, Close and Merrick, with us in the RV and drove north to Dundee, MI where we parked in the RV lot behind the Cabela's store.  Just as we arrived there it got very dark and windy.  We turned on our special weather radio and listened to the reports of 80mph winds and some fast moving heavy rains and hail.   We waited before we put out our slides and sat watching the skies for a while.  We must have been pointed into the storm just right as we really didn't feel much wind.  Luckily, the storm did not last long.  The next morning we took the girls into the Russell Stover Candy Outlet for some treats and then spent some time going through the aquarium and animal exhibits inside the Cabela's store.  The Cabela's is 225,000 sq. feet of everything you'd ever need to hunt, fish and camp.  The first time we'd brought the girls here several years ago, they didn't realize that although the aquarium has live fish, the rest of the exhibits are "stuffed" animals.  They are very well done and amazingly life-like and you can get so much closer to them than at a zoo.      From there we drove the rig to Monroe, MI and checked in at our "home" campground, Harbortown RV Resort.  This is where we usually stay when we are in the Toledo area.  On our arrival, we discovered that during the storm the night before three RVs had been flipped in the wind...one had two people inside at the time...and that a little dog had been swept away in the wind.  There were quite a few small trees that had been snapped in half and the pool was full of mulch from the surrounding flower beds and playground.  They were busy cleaning up.      We had a great time with the two granddaughters...taking them to the pool and playground at the RV park and then into Toledo to visit all the real animals at the Toledo Zoo and on a visit to see their great-grandmother (Tom's mom, Louise.)  We drove to Findlay, OH on Thursday and met Ann and Coffey at Wendy's for lunch and then Close and Merrick went home with Mom. 
Close Ann all ready for her night "In the Caribbean" at Edgewood School
I think Coffey missed this one, but made some great hits at the softball games we attended in Marysville.
It took a forklift to get "Pottsie the Pig" into the moving truck for its ride from Marysville to Mount Vernon.
Over the next several days we had some personal appointments and enjoyed dinner with friends, Bonnie and Don Wolfe, who live in Las Vegas but were also visiting the Toledo area in their Southwind motor home.  On Sunday, June 12 we had a fantastic "reunion" with Mary's family.  Thirty-one of us gathered at the Heatherdowns Country Club in Toledo for their Sunday Brunch to honor Mary's 97-year-old grandmother, Helen Close, who had passed away in March. It was good to see everyone.  We went to dinner one night with Tom's sister, Judy, and her husband, Ron and another time with old friend Jacques Everhart.  And one day we stopped by Mary's old school, Holland Elementary.  They were demolishing the wing that her classroom had been in for many years in order to replace it with a nice new addition to the school.  It was really interesting to watch the heavy equipment methodically take the old building apart.   
Tom with Merrick, Close and Great-Grandma Louise.
Close and Merrick with the fighting bears at Cabela's in Dundee, MI.
Mary's family gathered at the Heatherdowns Country Club in Toledo for a small reunion.
After many hot, stuffy years, Mary's classroom at Holland Elementary was finally "air-conditioned."
For more of our June adventures please click on "Forward" at the top of the screen.
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We were on the road again on Wednesday, June 15, with our first stop in Bradner, OH at Amos RV.  We had hopes of getting our "surround sound" working again.  But, that was not to be....perhaps another time in another place.  Then it was on to Mount Vernon, OH where we parked the rig at the home of Ed and Sue Sims.  We arrived there in early afternoon and were in time to go with them to attend the closing ceremonies of "The Healing Field."  This project is sponsored by the National Exchange Club and is put on in many cities across the US.  Partnering with local organizations, you can purchase American Flags in honor or memory of service veterans, members and "first responders."  Then the flags are all planted in rows in a large field for several days.  Programs are held at the site each evening, and on the final evening you may take home your flags and poles.  In Mount Vernon there were about 1500 flags.  It was quite a sight to see them all waving in the wind as we approached the field on the slightly elevated highway and the program was an emotional experience.  After the ceremonies we went to dinner with Ed and Sue at the new Pottsie's BBQ location in Mount Vernon. 

June 2005
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"The Healing Field" in Knox County, OH    June 15, 2005
Our friends Ed and Sue Sims and Pottsie the Pig in Mount Vernon, OH.
We always enjoy staying at the Sims' "Campground."  They have several acres of land and a large barn and driveway at the rear of the property where we can pull in and hook up to electricity, and their latest amenity is WiFi...what more could we ask for?  Thursday morning, June 16, Ed and Sue led us across the rolling, winding and wooded roads of Amish country to Berlin, OH.  At the Scenic Hills RV Park we joined 25 other rigs for a weekend joint rally of three Bounder chapters.  What's wrong with this picture?????  We no longer own a Bounder!  We were SOB's (some other brand!) for the weekend and got to visit with old friends that we hadn't seen in two or three years.  The Tri-State Brigade of Bounders United were our first contact with RVers and we've always considered them special friends.  Many of the group also belong to the Wino-Roos and the Buckeye Bounders and the joint camp-out was lots of fun.  Co-hosts, Ed and Sue Sims and Connie and Dave Kidney had arranged for buffet breakfasts and dinners at the Der Dutchman and Farmstead restaurants and for gatherings around the campfire in the evenings.  We went with friends Jacques Everhart and Valjean Knerr to tour the local Amish cheese factory, bakery and wineries...all good places to stock up!
On Father's Day, Sunday, June 19, we drove from Berlin, OH to Waterville, OH and parked behind the local McDonald's.  Dennie Dew provided taxi service and we joined Don and Bonnie Wolfe at Dennie and Kathy's house for a great dinner and visit - a reunion of our winter cruise team.  After dinner we returned to the Dutch Star and drove north to Dundee, MI and parked in the Cabela's store lot for the night once again  There was a little more traffic at Cabela's this trip as there had been a race at the nearby Michigan International Speedway on Sunday.  The line-up at the dump station was quite long on Monday morning (luckily we didn't need to use it!) as we departed, heading to the Thousand Trails Preserve in St. Clair, Mi, just south of Port Huron.  Along the highways we passed some interesting campers, outfitted for race weekend with huge platforms on the roof and extended racks on the rear for huge grills, beer kegs, ladders and chairs.
Somewhere in the spring, we had asked for hot, sunny weather.  Well, we found it!!!!!   Our week at the St. Clair Thousand Trails was a really, really HOT one!  We had a really nice site, the park is a good one, but we had really poor electric service.  The park manager claims it is an area problem, not the park...but we had only around 100 volts reading on our meter during the hot afternoons and evenings, and our power management system would shut down our electricity any time the coach draw was above that....meaning we could not run the air-conditioning...even with the refrigerator and water heater running on gas and everything else in the coach shut down.  So, we sweltered!!!  Several days we did run the generator for a while so we could fire up both A/C units and cool the place down.
For more of our June adventures please click on "Forward" or "Back" at the top of the screen.
Typical scene at any RV rally.....a single chore gets more than enough supervisors...here the Buckeye Bounders are replaing an awning on the rig of Jim and Mary Truett.
Other than the heat,  we had a good week in the St. Clair area.  We did a little exploring each day and visited the towns of St. Clair, Marysville and Port Huron...all along the St. Clair River.  The drive along the river in each of the towns is quite pretty with beautiful homes and nice parks near the water. We saw a few public beaches, too.  One day we went across the Blue Water Bridge from Port Huron to Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.  The bridge is aptly named, as the water is a bright blue at the mouth of the river at Lake Huron. For your information...it costs more to come back than it did to go over.  We visited the small Casino and another large park on the Canadian side.  We got some strange comments when we had to give our address at the library and post office in Marysville.  There apparently is an Apple Drive in Marysville, MI as well as in OH :-)  We used the library several days to check e-mail as the campground hookup was on a pay phone in the laundry.  One day we met old friends Mary and Harold Morgan who spend the summer in Yale, MI and winters in Texas, and enjoyed a great lunch at Olive Garden while catching up on news.  We'd met them when we both owned Bounders (they now have a Holiday Rambler) and have crossed paths often over the years. 
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For more of our June adventures please click on "Back" at the top of the screen.
The Blue Water Bridge across the St. Clair River from Sarnia, Ontario to Port Huron, MI
Harold and Mary Morgan with Tom along the river in Port Huron, MI.
On Saturday afternoon, June 25, we escaped the heat of the campground and drove the car 120 miles back to Toledo, OH.  We went to a retirement party for Mary's sister-in-law, Beth, who was leaving behind 30 years of teaching.  It was a great party!  We spent the night in Beth and Bill's air-conditioned condo and the next day went to a 1st birthday party for our great-niece, Brooke.  That was a fun day and an opportunity to see lots of Tom's family.  It wasn't any cooler when we returned to the Thousand Trails Preserve and our coach Sunday evening.
The birthday girl, Brooke, enjoyed her cake.
On Monday we did chores around home and Mary finished up her week-long project of five new sundresses for the granddaughters. We made a last trip into Marysville, MI to stock up on groceries and stop at the library and Post Office. Other coaches in the park are using "autoformers" to boost their power, and many ran at low voltage.  We again used our generator for a while to cool the coach.
Hopeful for cooler weather we left Thousand Trails on Tuesday, June 28.  Our first stop was the giant outlet mall at Birch Run on I-75.  We shopped for several hours and then moved on to the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant, MI. joing quite a few other rigs in the big parking lot.  On a drive into town we found a WiFi signal in a hotel parking lot and were able to check e-mail..part of our new activity as we travel...searching for WiFi broadcast signals!  Our evening at the casino proved profitable as well. 
It was still fairly warm and humid as we departed Wednesday morning, heading further north to see our friends, Char and Terry Eicher, who live in the woods between Grayling and Kalkaska, MI.  We had visited them last year at this same time and once again, they proved to be the ultimate hosts!  Char and Terry have 11 acres of land with a patio and full hookups for two RVs.  They also own an '04 Dutch Star similar to ours.  We spend our winters at the same park, Palm Creek, in Arizona and we enjoyed catching up on news and seeing if we remember how to play tennis.  Terry is also an excellent cook...so we ate well while visiting.   We planned to stay at Char and Terry's till July 4th.