From Jose
After Traverse City, we went to Houghton Lake, Michigan. We needed to go there to have some work done in the RV. The holding tank sensors keep giving the wrong reading. They say the holding tanks are full when I know that is not true. This is a common problem with RV holding thanks. I wanted to replace the sensors. But the RV repair place told me it would take over a week to get the parts and over $300 to do the work. So I decided this is not *that* important. I usually have a pretty good idea how full the holding tanks are.
Our next stop was Grand Rapids but that was a little further than what I wanted to drive in one day so we stopped for the night in a little town named Paris, complete with a 18ft tall Eiffel Tower that the local High School welding class built as a project. Adjacent to the campground is an old fish hatchery that the town has converted into a park and museum. The ponds and some fish are still there as well as numerous duck and geese. They have some machines where for a quarter you get a handful of fish food or bird food. We spent most of our laundry quarters there, the birds and the fish were very thankful.
From there we went to Grand Rapids, Michigan. My niece Gladys lives there, my only niece I had not met yet. I did get to meet Gladys and her youngest son Victor. Her husband Lennie and oldest son Vinnie were out of town at a Raiders football game. Like her siblings, Gladys is super nice. Very quickly I felt like I had known her all her life. She is a RN. Victor is very talented and has a great imagination. He will surely go far.
We all went to Fredrick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Fredrick Meijer founded a chain of department superstores along the lines of Walmart. He created the gardens and park to give something back to the community. The iconic sculpture in the park is a 24 ft tall horse based on sketches by Michelangelo. There is also an interactive children's learning Park. This, of course, was my favorite.
The next day Gladys' husband Lennie and oldest son got back from their football trip (Raiders lost) and we got to meet them too. We all went to dinner at Red Robin and talked into the night. It's good to know I have such great family in other parts of the US.
In Grand Rapids we had an unexpected and unwanted adventure. One morning I got up to go to the bathroom at about 5am and when I stepped down the floor was wet. I stepped in a different spot and it was wet. I turned on the light to see the whole floor was flooded. Turns out a water valve stayed open and flooded the rv. We spent the next day removing the water, getting everything off the floor, etc. We rented a rug shampooer (from the Meijer superstore) and tried to vacuum up as much water as possible. I hope it will not get too smelly in the weeks ahead.
From Grand Rapids we went to Toledo, Ohio. Does anybody remember a song by John Denver, "Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio"? Well... We needed to go to Toledo to buy dog food. At the beginning of this trip I decided to buy the dogfood at Costco because it is fairly good, fairly inexpensive, and available in every state of the country. But to my surprise the Costco in Michigan did not carry the canned food. I called the Costco call center and, believe it or not, got a very good agent (not that I have anything against call center agents, some are very good. Right, Katie? ). She searched the stores along our route and found out the store in Toledo had 74 cases of canned dogfood. So off we went. But I found Toledo to be very busy, crowded, not my kind of town, so after getting the dogfood we kept on going and ended up in Bowling Green, Ohio. We stayed in a cute campground called Fire Lake Camper Park surrounded by cornfields. It consists of a 8-acre lake with campsites all around it. Today we rented a paddleboat and took a spin on the lake. The dogs came too and they enjoyed it a lot. Diane made me watch "Children of the Corn", which has some references to a lake of fire. Hmmm.
The next major stop is Niagara Falls. We'll be there in a few days.
Stay tuned
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