Where's Eldo? In Chi-Town, at the ZOO! Part III

Elkhart, IN      High:  71    Low:  58

After leaving Millennium Park yesterday, we headed to Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago's FREE zoo, which is right in the heart of Chicago. It was too far to walk from the park, so we took the bus for 2.50 a person...The kids had lots of fun looking out the windows on the way there and back and seeing some unusual things.  Like this orange water fountain....

Trevor wanted to know if there were hobos in Chicago. We had a long and interesting discussion about them. He worried about them all day long...Every time he saw one, he wanted to give them some food or money. He sure has a big heart....

We arrived at the zoo, and it was PANDA-monium ...HAHAH!  Coudn't resist that one!...we didn't see any pandas, but we saw LOTS of people weirdly dressed, both adults and children. Turns out it was TRICK-AND-TREAT day at the zoo...UH-OH! This could have been a problem for more than just the kids and it was. The primates--the gorillas and monkeys-- were upset by the weird costumed kids and adults that came by the exhibit--so much that they had to put up screens in front of the nursing gorilla mothers. That didn't work, so they closed the primate house early. Back outside we went.

All the adults in the family kept distracting and steering the grandkids away from the treat and treat line signs so we managed to enjoy the zoo without the sugar high and crash that comes later!

Love this octopus costume!

Eldo attempted to get in one of the trick or treat lines, as he had a craving for candy corn, but Sparky grabbed his arm in the nick of time and hustled him away from temptation. (Darn it! says E.)

For a free zoo, it was really nice! Some nice habitats for the animals...Some wonderful indoor tropical rainforest areas.....Some really cool animals...Sparky loves the giraffes...

and the little baby ones, too! No relation to us, but too cute to pass up!

We saw some cool bears...this is a "spectacle bear" or an Andean bear....He looked very thoughtful as he posed for his picture....

Zoos are almost as much fun for people watching as they are for animal watching....Sparky caught this little girl talking to the hippos and wanting them to come and see her.....

We took photos not only of the animals, other people's children, but of ourselves as well!

Kristi and her "sister" Bobbi

Eldo and Sparky at the park just outside the zoo....

The grandsons exhibiting art with attitude just outside the zoo.....

We just had a fabulous time with fabulous weather! After the zoo, we found a rooftop restaurant where everyone just collapsed and had either a 1) root beer or 2) a regular beer....Don't the grandsons look like they've seen it all and done it all today? And they look tired, too! This was not the place we should have gone at 4.00 a root beer, and about 9-12.00 for a beer! But we were thirsty and it was across the street from the train station....

We highly recommend the Lincoln Park Zoo when you are in Chicago...Brookfield Zoo is one of the top zoos in the world, but today, the free one fit the bill!

Fall color at the Lincoln Park Zoo

Tomorrow, we leave Elkhart.......We'll let you know where our next destination is, when Eldo figures it out!

Where's Eldo? In Chi-Town Part II

Elkhart, IN   High:    64    Low:  50

Eldy's got his arms around all his girls  :-) Kristi, Bobbi, and Lori

First stop, Millennium Park near the lakefront. Millennium Park is a short walk from the train station, like a half block! Millennium Park is a 24.5 acre park that is part of Grant Park in Chicago and has a lot of art in it. One of the most famous pieces is Cloud Gate, or "The Bean" as the locals refer to it. It has 168 stainless steel plates welded together and you can't see ANY seams! It was designed by an Indian sculptor named Anish Kapoor.  The bean reminds you of liquid mercury, the reflections always changing.....It's a fluid experience! Heheheh.....

Sparky LOVES the bean!  It's so fun to watch the families pose, experiment, and get silly at the Bean. Of course everyone has to try and "hold up" the Bean....

Eldy, Connor and a stranger :-)

The kids had a lot of fun posing in different ways....

The Bean has lots of facets and reflections that change depending on which side you are looking at....This is the side facing the city...one of Sparky's favorite shots of the Bean....

Families pose and try different angles of looking at themselves and other people. Trevor looks like he is floating in mid air!

We walked around the park and checked out some of the other sculptures. This is an AURAL sculpture. It plays a SOUND concert at certain times of the day....There was a concert at 5:00 PM today, and we were going to try and catch it, but we missed it, too busy having fun elsewhere--at the Lincoln Park Zoo!

After seeing and playing at The Bean, we left the park...Trevor can never just walk along the sidewalk, he has to climb everything in sight!

We had a WONDERFUL time at the park...The weather was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky, nice and cool fall temperatures. Time to head for the zoo...Let's hop on the city bus, kids... a first time for some of the grandkids. See you at the Lincoln Park Zoo tomorrow!

Where's Eldo? In CHI-TOWN! Part I

Elkhart, IN      High:  56    Low:  39

Back in the early eighties, Eldy had a foreign exchange student, Bobbi, from "down under"-- Sydney, Australia....Eldy and his family warmly welcomed Bobbi into their family for a year. They became very close with Bobbi, and stayed in touch through the years. Bobbi is currently in the midwest, in CHICAGO, and the family began planning a trip to Chicago to spend the day with Bobbi and her husband, Chris.

Eldy's son and daughter, Brian and Kristi, and their families along with Sparky and Eldy hopped on the South Shore at the South Bend Airport. For 11.75 a person for the adults, one way, we headed to Chi-town for the day. The kids had a lot of fun on the train, and the big kids did, too!

Brian, Eldy, and grandson Trevor

Sparky is glad she's not the only one that's a "mamarazzi!"  (A mom who takes lots and lots of photos, documenting every moment of their child's life, according to a definition on Urban Dictionary.) Lori, Brian's wife, took LOTS of photos, and immediately started tagging everyone on Facebook. :-) Sparky is not sure how to tag exactly, she leaves that up to the younger generation, but she's working on it!

While we were en route to Chicago, Eldo spotted an Encore park that would be a great place to stay with your RV if you wanted to hop on the South Shore train and spend the day in Chicago. It's Lakeside RV Park in New Carlisle and offers Passport America rates. It has great ratings. Its right next to the South Shore line which is cause for some dings in the ratings. However, they don't blow the horns, which is a good thing, and this is not a major train line like the trains going through the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen, IN. The positives for being able to hop on the train to go to Chicago sure make up for the noise of the train cars clickety clacking on the tracks throughout the night. There are not that many trains during the overnight hours. The South Shore doesn't stop there unless you press a button at the train station a few minutes before it is due to arrive. Door to door service!

Everybody passed the time with playing their phones and electronics...What did we ever do without them?! Don't answer that! :-)

Brian and Eldy went head to head on trying to figure out how to receive the Notre Dame game on their phones, but didn't have much luck. Note the "like father, like son" position of their sunglasses!

More photo opps and we aren't even to Millennium Park yet!

Eldy's three grandkids

Eldy's daughter-in-law, Lori, and her daughter, Cate...the blog writer from this summer...If you've been following the blog, Sparky, always in teacher mode, made the grandkids blog about their two week vacation with us. Cate didn't mind, Trevor did.

The train ride was a little over two hours and passed by quickly....The South Shore train is known for its punctuality and keeping to schedule and today was no exception! Our first stop---Millennium Park right across the street from the train station stop! See you at the park tomorrow!

Mr. Fixit and the Phaeton Has Issues

Elkhart, IN     High:  55   Low:  43

Our Tiffin has been terrific for two years...There have been some little things, nothing major. Eldy makes regular inspections checking everything out around the windows, doors, slides. He checks for a screw loose..haha...Sparky's got a few loose, but those can't be fixed! (Glad SHE said that!) Little things have come loose, a screw here and there, floor tiles loosening in a couple of places. Nothing we couldn't fix ourselves or live with where we felt we needed to make a trip to Red Bay. Until now....

We have noticed the floor starting to separate underneath the living room (the big slide) outside.

We have a gasket that seems to be shifting and pulling away from a corner on the outside wall.

We have a slide that is slowly rubbing the paint off where the gasket seal is supposed to protect that.

We have a battery tray weld that broke that holds the battery tray in the bay. We are looking for a possible local repair for that. The water heater won't stay lit on gas, but does fine on electric power.

Most of these things are going to have to be addressed in Red Bay as warranty issues, particularly the floor separation, which they tell us will be a one day job. We called Tiffin in Red Bay and there are no appointments available for three months, but you can come and get in line for repairs. Eldy has been checking the forums to see what the wait looks like.  A couple of days ago there were 157 coaches waiting at Red Bay for service! The boondocking sites were completely full. People were waiting to come in...  Sigh! We're thinking it might be better going in January when the snowbirds have already landed for the winter.... In the meantime....

Eldy's son, Brian, came by to help Eldy drain the water heater and replace the anode rod, something you should do at least once a year. It's an expensive rod, about 14.00. It's an easy job, too, but you want to have the water heater turned off and the water cooled down a bit before draining. Eldy had shut the water heater off a couple hours earlier for the purpose of draining the heater. It's a good thing he did, because both the guys forgot to release the pressure valve before draining. As they unscrewed the anode rod fitting, the water came exploding out with a year's worth of crud---all over Eldy!  Had the water not been cooled down, he could have been scalded! Here's what the anode rod looks like after a year of doing its job.

The guys got the job done....and the bay door chain and door closer fixed. A self-tapping screw had broken off in the screw hole, and the chain had fallen off, so that the wind COULD have caught the door and slammed it wide open...It's sort of a safety chain, just like on your screen doors at home. Brian helped Eldy whip through these projects with his ideas and suggestions on how to fix stuff. Thanks, Brian!

Brian

The third fix-it project for the day is ongoing....the steering wheel table idea, thanks to helpful information from Paul Dahl, R Sanity RV Adventures. We found an inexpensive accent table with a 20" diameter (9.00) at Bed, Bath and Beyond, (not found at Walmart, Michael's, JoAnn's, or Hobby Lobby). After seeing the screws of the legs were penetrating the top-- a manufacturing defect--Sparky decided on a bigger circumference table top-24"-- from Lowe's for a little more thickness, a nicer table top, and a little more money (17.00). We'll show photos of the final table project when it's complete. It was a productive day today...And oh, yeah! Sparky got a nice haircut! (When Mama's happy, everybody's happy! says a relieved E.) I'm happy!

Sparky Has a New Nickname!

Elkhart, IN     High: 51   Low:  41     WIND........It's nerve wracking!

Sparky was given a new nickname by her daughter (who just had Sparky's first grandbaby this past June.) "Just call me 'Grandmarrazzi' ".  Kerry came up with her own moniker for her Mama Sparky after seeing the word here:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mamarazzi.....If you don't care to go clicking here it is:

mamarazzi

1. Mothers who constantly follow their children around with several cameras and video taking equipment, snapping photos at each turn and documenting each milestone or event with at least two dozen photos and a video. 2. Groups of aforementioned mothers 3. When referring to yourself as described above  1. You can’t even get close to the swings because of all the mamarazzi. 2. I can’t believe how many photos I took of baby Madison on the slide! I’m such a mamarazzi!

Oh, yeah, I'm a grandmarazzi,  and I'm proud of it! says Sparky. Sparky has already told Kerry to be prepared when she comes to visit Sparky and Eldo in December around the holidays, that the camera WILL be out, and the cheeks on that baby WILL be smooched-- a LOT!

                                        

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What did we do today?  Headed back to Shipshewanna, Amish country. Got some more zucchini bread at the Blue Gate Restaurant to freeze and save for eating later in the year, ate our last Jojo's pretzel at the Davis Mercantile, ate some yogurt at the Hitching Post, a cool toys and candy shop...

and visited the Guggisberg Deutsch Kase Haus cheese factory in Middlebury. You can watch championship cheese being made (they won an award for this year), eat samples, (we did) and buy cheese and/or meat. (We did.) 

Bonneyville Grist Mill

Lastly, we stopped by Bonneyville Mill, a free county park with Indiana's oldest operating gristmill that continues to produce flour.....When other mills expanded and updated their equipment, Bonneyville chose to stay true to a mill of the Civil War era. It grinds flour the old fashioned way with a horizontal water wheel/turbine. They produce flour from May to October. Sparky purchased a small bag of cornmeal flower and is gonna make cornmeal muffins. (She's gonna COOK? This I gotta see! says E.) "Hey, now, I just made some brownies, I do know how to use the convection oven!" retorts Sparky. :-)

Bonneyville Mill is a beautiful park, 222 acres of rolling hills, woodlands, marshes and open meadows. There are over five miles of hiking trails here. We sort of stumbled upon the park and didn't have time to hike the trails today, but we did check out the mill and the herb and flower gardens on the grounds. The ornamental grasses were gorgeous! (You can tell Sparky likes to garden, more photos of the grounds than inside the mill! explains Eldo.)

It's really cool and full of charm.......You can feel the grist stones vibrating under your feet and hear the rushing water as it powers the mill. The ancient equipment inside really made you feel like you were back in the early 1800's. 

Even the cash register was over 120 years old and they used it to ring up Sparky's corn meal purchase.

Everything was numbered, explanations were provided by park personnel and the mill was put into operation for us to see.

The mill is getting ready to close at the end of the month. We were glad to get there today before it did and see a piece of history!

Ropchan Nature Preserve

Elkhart, IN     High:  70 (!)     Low:  46

Sparky went to Fremont yesterday to get a haircut and run some errands...Like go past her old house and see how the renters are maintaining it...so far, so good. Next, check out some Halloween decorations....These were cool....

Her absolute favorite place in Fremont is Ropchan Nature Preserve, an Acres land trust property that relies on donations from the public to acquire and preserve beautiful, natural areas for hiking and walking and for the enjoyment of future generations. Here's the first part of one of the trails leading into the forest.....

When Sparky lived in Fremont, right next to Angola, IN, she hiked at least two to three times a week through the preserve. It was a great stress reliever after a hard day of teaching. So today, back to Ropchan for a two mile hike....Ropchan is just outside of Fremont,  heading towards Angola on Williams Street which turns into 827. There are several trail choices leading through a grassy meadow, a pine forest, a lake, and multiple woods. It's good exercise, you are traipsing up and down hills throughout the trails......

She almost always saw deer...But today, none! Just beautiful woods....and a carpet of thick leaves....

Beautiful leaves.....This one looks like it's starting to catch on fire!

The leaves on the forest floor were HUGE! This leaf dwarfs the surrounding oaks...Beech leaf, maybe?

Ropchan has great little bridges and boardwalks to keep your feet out of the bogs and mud so you can cross into the different habitats...

The Fremont/Angola area has about ELEVEN Acres preserves...amazing for such small towns (Fremont--pop. about 3,000) to have so many beautiful places to enjoy nature! Sparky was glad to have the chance to revisit Ropchan..Time to head back home to Elkhart to see how Eldy did today. He worked on the motorhome, more polishing and waxing......Bye for now.....

A Visit to Ruthmere Mansion

Elkhart, IN     High:  72    Low: 46

Sparky's friend, Jeannie, from South Bend, came over today for a visit. She and Sparky decided to visit the Ruthmere Mansion just down the road a few miles from the campground. It's a mansion. It's a museum. It's wonderful! The mansion is named for the only child of Albert and Elizabeth Beardsley, one of Elkhart's most prominent couples in the early 1900's. It's named for their daughter, Ruth, who died in infancy from hydrocephalus, water on the brain. The "mer" part has the meaning of connected to "water" or the "sea". The mansion sits across from the Elkhart River. The tour was 10.00 a person, and lasted an hour...No photos are allowed.  :-(   But after seeing the incredible treasures inside, the Cuban mahogany walls everywhere, the priceless china and glassware that the Beardley family had, the artwork, you can understand why the curators of this 1910 Beaux Arts mansion would not want photos plastered all over the internet. This mansion has been featured on A & E "Castles of America", and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's one of the most opulent and grand places in America and it's right here in Elkhart!

This 1910 home of Albert and Elizabeth Beardsley is decorated with SILK wall coverings, there are hand carved woodwork, wall murals painted on fabric and ornate Victorian style decor is everywhere. There are original Rodin statues, fine art, Tiffany lamps, paintings and vintage autos. When we got to the garage, there were three antique autos, and one of them was a Milburn electric car built from 1912 to 1920. There were thousands of them made back in the early 1900's. Sparky didn't know that! It didn't have a steering wheel, but a "tiller/rudder" like you see on a boat! They were made in Toledo, OH. Hmmm! What goes around comes around, they say.....Isn't that the truth!

from the internet

Sparky has seen a LOT of fancy mansions on her travels around the sun with Eldo, but this was one of THE fanciest she has ever seen. Fancy to the point of taking your breath away as you walk into some of the rooms... There was an amazing intricately set stained glass skylight on the second floor. There were beautiful stained class windows in the Craftsman style on the first floor. There was so much handcarved wood and elaborate decor, you couldn't take it all in.  Wow!

from the internet

Sparky and Jeannie knew that the pineapple was a symbol of hospitality, but they didn't know that the pomegranate, featured predominantly in carved relief all over the house, was a symbol of wealth and prosperity. There is gold gilding everywhere. This house certainly gave them bragging rights...However, they were not your typical high society couple. Mrs. Beardsley started the first "bookmobile" in Elkhart. She wore makeup when it wasn't "in" at the time, she smoke and cussed when she thought the situation fit. She also drank a fifth of champagne every night to help her sleep! Albert Beardsley, her husband, was one of Elkhart's most prominent citizens.

What else was cool about this house? The stories behind it...The second set of Beardsleys who lived in the house, raised a lot of boys...they set up bowling pins downstairs in a narrow hallway leading to the greenhouse. The sides of the walls have murals painted depicting scenes from Italy all over them. Bet the mother had fits about that! One of the statues on the staircase leading from the lower level has a broken arm as one of the boys was throwing a football and hit the statue...These are no ordinary statues, they had to cost an arm and a leg!   HA! Couldn't resist that one! :-)

The kitchen had a set of china that Abraham Lincoln dined from...the family room had a viewing scope stand that was the precursor to the Viewmaster slide shows, you know the little handheld viewers that you would insert a disc into and pull the lever and the disc rotated around showing you scenes of various themes? This was a full size stand viewing scope. They would view their slides of their trips on it. It was very interesting!  They had a piano/player/organ called a Choralcelo. In the foyer, the piano plays as a piano. In the library, there are 17 pipes installed under the floor that reverberates the music as organ music when the piano is played. Almost like surround sound, only it was the early 19th century.

They had a shower in the master's bedroom that had a cage of pipes inside the shower, shooting water--probably the first "walk in shower" with multiple water jets, we think! The house even has a central vac system, unheard of in those times. There was a sprinkler system in case of fire. The walk in closets have automatic lighting that comes on when you open the door. This house had everything and more back then.....

It is an amazing place....We HIGHLY recommend this tour when you visit Elkhart. It's just 15 minutes from the Elkhart Campground. And, a second historical home, the Havilah Beardsley House, is nearby, on the northwest corner of Main Street and Beardsley Ave.  Dr. Havilah Beardsley was the founder of Elkhart. Two beautiful mansions within a block of each other...Nice!

Lots to do in Elkhart and the surrounding area, we are really enjoying our stay....See you later!