Today Dad and I attended the Tractor Pull with our close family friend Paul. Dad and Paul have been attending for many years and have it down to a science. We arrived before 8 AM when there was no entrance fee. Then we headed straight to the Elkhart County Exchange concession stand for all-you-can-eat pancakes. By the time we finished our $7 worth of pancakes and sausage it was time to head to the grandstands and see the first class of pullers (21,000 lb Farm Stock).
At Noon we headed back to the midway to eat lunch at the Pork concession stand. My pork burger was delicious. After lunch we headed back to the grandstands and watched several classes pull until we decided to leave at around 4 PM. We grabbed some ice cream from the Dairy Barn concession stand to eat on our way to the parking lot. The weather was perfect and we had a great day.
Today we completed our migration to my hometown. We dropped off of I-90 just west of Cleveland (where the tolls start) and picked up Ohio SR-2 (which is limited access until after Sandusky, OH). In Toledo we took I-280 to I-75 South to I-475 to US-20. US-20 was good road other than the fact that it was closed for construction in two spots requiring detours (one in Ohio and the other in Indiana just west of Angola). The trip took about six hours.
We pulled into the paved parking lot next door to Mom and Dad’s house (wider driveway) and Dad met us there. We were shocked to see Mom appear a few minutes later with her wheeled walker sporting her new replacement hip. While we disconnected the Tahoe from the RV, Mom did laps in the parking lot around us to get her therapy exercise in (which totally cracked me up). Once we unhooked, we drove the RV across the yard and hooked up to Dad’s 50 Amp RV outlet (Glamping in the backyard rocks!). Shortly after we got parked my sister and brother-in-law arrived and we ordered pizza for dinner.
Since we are going to be here for nearly a month, we decided to follow Beth’s sister Kathy’s example and build a small cat habitat so the kitties can get out of the camper once in a while. On Monday we headed back to Angola for our first ever visit to a Menards. This is a wonderful store that I should never be allowed to enter alone with a credit card in hand. Even though our plastic fence and 6 plastic stakes cost roughly $15 our bill at checkout had somehow climbed to over $90. When we got home we were able to quickly assemble the habitat against the back of Dad’s garage and throw some cats in (I like to keep Beth in it too in order to prevent her from wondering off). While inside the habitat, Mercury discovered that he likes to roll around on Dad’s cinder blocks.
