The Ray Adventures: Grafton, Maumee Bay SP and Great Lakes Naval Station

The weather is still up and down, when it's good it's very, very good and when it's bad I hibernate. This week has taken us from Ohio to Indiana and now Illinois.

Monday, May 11th, I spent the morning finishing last week's long overdue blog, I was a little brain dead. I went into the metropolis of Grafton for groceries then we worked on getting ready to leave in the morning. We'd heard all day about the severe storm that was on it's way with possible tornadoes. We watched the clouds come in, the wind picked up then started raining. We had very heavy rain with thunder and lightning for a couple of hours. We were fortunate, our space stayed dry while most of the others had a moat.

Tuesday, May 12th, We left before 10 for Maumee Bay State Park in Oregon, Ohio, pronounced Orygone, near Toledo Ohio. We took the scenic route, irritating Miss Sally (our GPS) to no end. Most of the way we drove along Lake Erie, many, many waterfront mansions. Gary fought a crosswind most of the 126 miles. Maumee Bay State Park has lots of trails for hiking or biking and this time of the year the "birders" are here for the migratory birds. We didn't get a chance to do any hiking, it was cold and windy. We got to the park by 1:00 giving us time for errands. Since Gary refuses to grow a ponytail he found a barber, and of course Wal-Mart. We were about half way back when Gary remembered he'd left his jacket at the barber shop. Rush hour had started so we decided to go back tomorrow. I was feeling like I was getting a cold, took some Airborne when we got back to the coach. I watched DWTS in the bedroom, disappointed Dereck was eliminated.

Wednesday, May 13th, I'm still feeling crummy and the weather is cold to make me more miserable. Our first order of the day was to head back into Toledo to pick up Gary's jacket then lunch at Maumee Bay Brewing Company in a historic hotel building. We drove over to the National Museum of the Great Lake on the southern side of Maumee Bay in Toledo, it opened in spring of 2014. The site includes the museum boat SS Col. James Schoomaker and a park with maritime artifacts. The gal in the gift shop told us that ships in the Great Lakes are called boats. There is 11,000 miles of shoreline along the lakes, the distance from Toledo to Perth, Australia. 8,000 boats have sunk in the Great Lakes which are so large they create their own weather, I'd heard of "lake effect" snow but I didn't exactly know what that meant. Gary toured the freighter, I stayed in the car with the heater on. Since the park did not have water or sewer I did some wash in the laundry room and dried them in the coach. We're leaving in the morning for Great Lakes Naval Station north of Chicago for 8 days, it doesn't have water or sewer either so we need to start with clean clothes.

Thursday, May 14th, Moving day, it's a nice day to travel, sunny with only a light breeze. We chose to take the toll road, it would have taken us out of the way about 80 miles to avoid. Well, after spending $58.00 in tolls, oh hindsight! Near Elkhart Indiana we saw the RV/MH Hall of fame just off the turnpike, decided to check it out. How fun to see the early "campers",from 1913 and up. We ran into Klaus and Diane, a couple we'd met at American Wilderness RV park. They gave us some good pointers about places to go in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Everyone has to excel at something, well we certainly excel at missing turns and turning the wrong way! We hit Chicago, missing the express lanes north to Great Lakes NS so we spent 2 1/2 hours in traffic. Sometimes it is a challenge to find the right gate at military bases, this time we really screwed up good. We proceeded to turn on the wrong street, having to stop at a low clearance RR overpass. We had to disconnect Then we discovered we'd left the tow brake "thingy" in Maumee Bay SP, the car won't move without it. It's hard to explain but we used the one for towing, he just had to cut the wire. Great! Finally found the RV park but had to find building 62 to check in, a couple of guys steered us in the right direction. The park made all that stress worth it, we are right on Lake Michigan, beautiful. We finally were settled in by 6:30.

Friday, May 15th, After our stressful arrival we decided to hang around base, it was a fairly nice day we took Luci on a 3 mile walk on the lakefront, letting her run on the beach and play in the water. We needed to find a Wells Fargo bank, they were scarce in Ohio and Indiana. We found one "sort of" in the area and took care of business. Grabbed a quick bite at Subway, stopped at the Commissary and NEX before heading home, I BBQ'd a couple of bone in- chicken breasts. Pretty tasty. We watched Fury with Brad Pitt after dinner, it was "ok".

Saturday, May 16th, Gary has a cousin, Larry, that grew up in Waukegan, if they ever met they were very young. He gave him a call in the morning to see if they'd be able to get together sometime while we are in the area. We were pleased they were free that night so we arranged to have dinner with them. After lunch we drove up close to the Wisconsin state line to a RV sales and service to replace our "white" thingy. Wah Hoo! They had the right part. Doesn't get any better than that. Larry called back in the afternoon to tell us where to meet them. It's a place that has 80 beers on tap, made Gary a happy man. We drove past the RV business we'd been to earlier in the day into Wisconsin for dinner with Larry and Karen. Neither one of them know what the other looked like, Gary waited at the door while I grabbed a table, it was very busy and very loud. We had the nicest time, even though they were family they were strangers. As it turns out I don't think either one of them knows a stranger, a very nice couple. They invited us to their home for dinner on Wednesday night. After leaving the restaurant we picked up our first Wisconsin geo cache.

Sunday, May 17th, We got up early to catch the 9:02 Metra train into Chicago, we caught a cab to Navy Pier from there. The brick buildings are beautiful, built about 100 years ago. Half way to the end is a amusement park complete with a ferris wheel, there's also an IMax and a children's museum. Gary got a call from another cousin that lives in the Chicago area, since he was leaving for Seville Spain Monday we arranged to get together for dinner after we got back from Chicago. We grabbed lunch at Margaritaville before heading out to the Hancock tower, formerly Sears, it was a nice walk, about 20 minutes 108 floors, the observation deck on the 103rd, giving you views N, S,E and W. The elevator ride to the top is pretty quick, I remember when I went there with Charlotte about 20 years ago it seemed to take forever, I must be getting over my phobia of elevators.
Then we decided to walk down the Miracle Mile, along Michigan Avenue, passing stores like Cartier, Tiffany, Neiman Marcs and Sakes 5th Ave., and a walk along the Chicago Riverfront. We'd walked that far so we thought, let's save cab fare and walk back to the Metra. Well, we went to the wrong station, with only a half hour until the train we started "hot footing" it. We could see the handwriting on the wall, we'd never make it, so we hailed a cab. The train only runs every two hours, poor Luci was in the coach all day and if we missed it we wouldn't have gotten back until 7:30. (See we do excel at making wrong turns). We stressed to the cab driver we were in a hurry, well, we made the train with 10 minutes to spare. It takes a little over an hour to get to Great Lakes from Chicago, we raced to the coach, fed and watered Luci and raced out to meet Lars. We had a nice dinner with him and his son. Lars grew up in Ellensberg, Washington, Gary spent a lot of time with his family growing up.

Monday, May 18th, We didn't do much today, recovered from our big hike yesterday in 80 degree humid heat. We took Luci on a 4 mile walk, along the lakefront, this time she went swimming. Gary was going to go to the Naval Museum here on base but it's closed on Monday.

That's it for this week, enjoy the pic's.

TTFN

Gary and Pam