June 2010

From Ohio, were we visited the airstream factory, back to Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and across Lake Michigan, through the State of Michigan, North to the Canadian border.

What a diversity, from the corn and wheat belt of the Mid West to the cities of Chicago and Milwaukee, to the great lakes area and North to the heavy forested Upper Michigan Penninsula.

Ready to go into Canada for the summer months of July and August all the way across as far East as we can go.

The airstream was invented by Wally Bryam (1932) as his wife refused to go anywhere, if she could not take her kitchen!

Pretty, cheeky bird; Cardinal, came to investigate our campsite.

Amish people, many do not use electricity and many opt for horse drawn carriages. The strict believers wear dark plain clothing and live a simple, bible centured life.

Dairy farm, which we visited and toured in Illinois, consisting of 10 individual components each with 2800 cows, who get milked three times a day. We watched, the birthing of one of a 100 calves, born daily on the farm.

John Deere Harvesters, the worlds most advanced, combine factory were we saw the steps involved in making them.

Chicago, a cloud scraping city, on Lake Michigan, with a heart , interesting architecture and lots of energy.

The bean-amish Vapoor's 110 Ton ridicoulously smooth silver drop sculpture, in which you can see your own reflection and that of Chicago's skyline. A major tourist attraction in the heart of the city, it's Millinium park.

This is how the other part of Chicago lives and "parks".!

What happens to letters from the time we drop them off till the time they are delivered and everything in between we learned on our tour through Chicago's mail center.

Chicago is also well known for it's industrial strikes and we landed in the middle of one note.

From large glass walled observation galleries above the Chicago Board of Trade, trading floors we saw throngs of traders feverishly shouting, waving their arms, using hand signals and throwing pieces of paper.

The Federalbank had a museum and this was one of the displays.

Milwaukee, were Harley has it's "hometown museum" and factory, Darren went on a factory tour and we both visited the museum and went to a get together were about 500 harley's and it's drivers showed up, impresive.

SS Badger the oldest steamferry in the States, we took a 4hours crossing on the ferry from Manitowoc in Wisconsin to Ludington in Michigan, across Lake Michigan,

In Michigan trucks are allowed to to carry more weight on the road than in any other state of America, hence the many axels and tires.

One of the many covered bridges of Michigan, we followed a special route and found quite a few.

H O M E S stands for the 5 Great Lakes: Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Lake Eerie and Lake Superior. We will travel along all and over some of them in the next month in America as well as in Canada. Together they hold 75% of the worlds watersupply.

Upper Michigan, Traverse City, is well known for it's cherries and they were ripe when we were there, cherries natural, cherry ice cream, pie you name it they make it.

We stumbled on an old timer boat and car show in the classy city of Petsokey, very interesting.

"Big Mack" the 5 mile Mackinac Bridge spans the straight of Mackinac between the lower Michigan andt he Upper Michigan Peninsula..

No matter were you are on the shores of the lake, every little town seems to have it's own light house some big like this one and some just skinny little lighttowers.

We are now heading to Saul Saint Marie times two! Both the United States and Canada have a city by that name on either side of the border. As it is Canada Day on the 1st of July and Independance Day on the 4th of July in the States we are going to clebrate with both countries their special days. A parade, fireworks, a Pow wow, tug boat race and more celebrations photo's of this and more next month.

June 2010

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