Magnus Returns From Thor

Tuesday, 5 November 2024

Since the Thor service manager didn't call us on Monday, like he promised, Ed called him today. This morning, early. And he said it was done.  All done--and if they'd only bothered to tell us the night before, we'd have been ready to leave!

We left anyway. I got up at 7:30 and started getting ready almost immediately, and I believe we pulled away at about 9:15. Luckily we'd left most of our stuff piled on the floor, ready to shove into suitcases and take off.  In the end the only things I forgot were Molly's chew toy and the lunch I was going to make.

We stopped for gas at Geyer Springs Road near Little Rock and made it all the way to Salem Illinois before stopping for the night. I'd made a reservation at a Holiday Inn Express there which was pet-friendly for a $25 fee. But even though I mentioned the pet twice--once during the reservation and once at check-in--I don't think they ever charged me the pet fee.  The price (ridiculously huge) charged was the same as the one I saw on the web page.

I ended up having to call the hotel to make the booking because the web page didn't have a way to select "pet" rooms. Which was good, because then I could be sure to get one. Funny, though--when I told the desk clerk what I wanted, she first proposed the double-bed suite room for $170, and when I demurred at having to pay so much, she immediately located a king bed normal room with accessibility features. Which we didn't need but at least the price was better, about $140.

There was a Jimmy Johns a mile away from the hotel, so we got gas and then stopped in there to pick up sandwiches. By the time we'd eaten, walked the dog--they had a fenced run, yay!--and got ready for bed, it was nine o'clock. Old TV series (Green Acres and Hogan's Heroes) put us to sleep.

Jimmy Johns so late at night gave me awful nightmares.

Magnus Goes Home to Thor, Day 8

Thursday, October 31

Holiday Inn Express turned out to have a pretty good buffet breakfast. Eggs, sausage and bacon, bagels but no cream cheese!  Peanut butter had to fill in.  And juice.  We ate quickly and got on the road by seven-ish. We got in to Princeton where we stopped to pick up whataburger by 6:45.  Drove in rain all morning--horrid.  Not heavy rain and not thunderstorms, thank heavens, but nearly constant.

And home.

Magnus Goes Home to Thor, Day 7

Wednesday, October 30

Oh, the day of stupid mistakes.  But first, the normal stuff.

Our hotel had a tiny little breakfast laid out. Plenty of coffee, fruit, oatmeal and muffins, but nothing for a meat-eater like Ed to subsist on.  So we popped over to a nearby restaurant--Kylies or some such--for eggs and stuff. I had biscuits with gravy, which were very good (yes, I know gravy is made with meat drippings, but I loooovvve it and never make it at home) except that it was more than I wanted. The two biscuits were served with the gravy on top, so I couldn't do one with gravy and the other with jelly like I prefer to do.  But it was still pretty good.

Then we checked out and headed up to Elkhart to kill a few hours at the RV Hall of Fame Museum. Since we were passing right by the repair shop, we stopped to talk to the service manager but he didn't have a firm date yet. No problem--he promised to call us later and he did.

 

 

The museum was pretty nice.  Lots of old RVs from the 1930s up through the 1970s or so. I wished the placards had been more informative--often they were sketchy. But we got to go inside about half of them and could figure out the features for ourselves--like the water tank approach, the heaters and lighting and all.

 It is so amazing to think that back before I was born, people were already loading up their gear into a box on wheels and traveling across the U.S. to see the sights. I mean, we all have an image of the covered wagon pioneers--they traveled to find a new home. And the dustbowl refugees of the depression--they loaded up their lives into pickup trucks or wagons and moved to California.  But these exhibits were of people like us--people who had a home but took vacations in Florida and Grand Canyon and Yosemite and all those scenic place. How cool is that?  Our grandparents--MY grandparents and I'm a grandparent myself--were going places.

I was bowled over.  There wasn't much else--the modern RV exhibit was limited to this one extremely huge and ridiculously ugly big thing.  And behind that was a display of pre-fab modular homes and a big sales pitch about why these were so much superior to the old mobile homes and even better than bricks-and-sticks houses.  They were nice, I'll admit, and seemed to be designed to withstand a hurricane or maybe even Texas turdfloater rainstorms.  Interesting; not exciting.

And now to the disaster.  With a couple of hours to kill, I decided to make a reservation at the hotel for the night. I got online on my phone with it's three-by-six inch screen and found the hotel I'd chosen previously--the Holiday Inn Express in North Springfield.  Except...it was in Springfield Illinois and I had not made a note of the state.  So when I reserved a room, it ended up being in Springfield Missouri. Nine hours away.

Our Thor tour was supposed to take an hour, from 3 to 4. But we were the only two people on the tour, and we kept getting into conversation with the nice guy--the product design manager for several lines of motorcoaches including our Palazzo. It was fascinating, very. But we weren't done until after 4, and we headed down the road with me driving and Ed supposed to navigate.

Which was impossible. Springfield Missouri was nine hours away and Springfield Illinois wasn't on our route. He figured that out quickly, and we kept heading south while he tried to make sense of my reservation.  Eventually we realized the error, so I asked him to just navigate toward St. Louis, and when my driving shift was over I'd get on the phone and try to fix the error.

Which I did, I think. I still haven't seen the refund for the non-refundable room, but the guy on the phone got us a reservation in Effingham Illinois, about 4-1/2 hours away.  The other mistakes made were me trying to do this on my phone without having pencil and paper and a flashlight available--he kept telling me numbers and asking for numbers and addresses and I kept having to switch my phone back and forth, looking them up and trying to remember them.

But he was very patient. For some reason I couldn't hear him at all when I put the phone on speaker, even when I turned the volume way up. Weird.

But we made it, stopped at Jimmy John's and got supper, and settled in by 9:00.  Note to self: eating JJs at 9pm is not a good idea. I woke up with nightmares more than once. Probably screaming in my sleep.

Magnus Goes Home to Thor, Day 6

Tuesday, October 29

Chicago wakes up,

 

 

 

I got to walk the Magnificent Mile, or at least a part of it. Not all that magnificent--lots of big buildings but not as great as Philadelphia, and lots of shopping but nothing as cool as the open air mall at Honolulu's Waikiki beach.  We took the walk after breakfast to kill some time before we headed out.

 


 

 Some history of the hotel

Inside the hotel

No 13th floor!!!

Outside the hotel (I think)

 

 

Walking around the area, after breakfast:

The plan for the day was to go back to the Thor manufacturing area and spend the night in an inexpensive hotel in Napannee, about 10 minutes south of Wakarusa.  And on the way there, stop at the Indiana Dunes National Park and do some hiking and see some birds.

And that is what we did...but not quite. We saw two mute swans (new bird for me!!!), a mess of mallard ducks, and some Canada Geese. And we did less than a mile of hiking.

 

Sorry to be such a jerk about it, but Indiana Dunes was the lamest National Park I've ever been to.   It appears to be a tiny dis-contiguous set of small parcels of land, mostly along the lake, joined together by local highways and interspersed with tiny townships. Some areas along the lake have parking areas with permits required by the township. This is something I've seen along the ocean, but not in "the middle" of a National Park!

 

We didn't see more than a few gulls and I failed to identify them. I did see a Bald Eagle at the marsh where the ducks were.  And a great blue heron.  The problem was that it was very windy and I had on blue jeans and uncomfortable tennis shoes.  I'd worn the shoes all the previous day and they were making my toes hurt.  So it was very beautiful, but there weren't any birds and I didn't feel much like hiking the little pathways.  We stopped at Old Baldy, a "huge" dune, and walked the trail to the beach there. About 1/4 mile.  They wouldn't let you climb on the dune...why?  Dunno.

 
And the park map was horrid so we had trouble finding anywhere else worth walking to. I guess I should have researched better. Usually you can ask the people in the visitor center and get better instructions than you can find online, but when I asked the guy at the center about the auto tour route he didn't seem to know what I was talking about, and for the hiking directions he just waved his hand at on the map.  He was nice and we talked about various things, but not very informative.

Then we went on to Napannee and checked into our hotel, and by then it was time for supper. We chose to go to Heinnie's Family Dining (and Bar) which was a 25-minute drive up to Elkhart and worth it.  Good salad, great waitress, good grilled fish and wild rice, and a rib-eye steak that was perfectly cooked.  They had slow roasted prime rib, too, but Ed chose the steak instead.

 

We were stuffed and happy and tired, so back to bed it was.  Very nice hotel, too--a local place, not a chain, and it gave us 10% off for being Thor repair customers.

Magnus Goes Home to Thor, Day 5

 Monday, October 28

My alarm was set for 5:30, but I got up a half-hour earlier. And then, rush, rush, rush to get ready for the service techs to come at 7:00. Which they did, right on time.

Sadly, they missed us--Ed was dumping the tanks when they came by our parking spot.  When he got back, he had to go flag down a guy.

Before that we had a near disaster of great proportions. Ed started pulling away from the site with the electric cable still connected. Possibly it would have just pulled the cord out of the socket and dragged it along the ground, but the plug is pretty hefty and might have stayed in place.  I saw him moving and ran screaming toward the front so I could flag him down, and--unbelievably--he heard me!  And stopped in time. Whew.

Then when the tech was looking over our issues, the jacks wouldn't level us.  That's never happened before with this motor home. Weird coincidence.  It kept saying the battery was low.  But even though it was chilly-ish, having gotten down to 34 degrees the night before, it wasn't cold enough to explain that.  So, we don't know.

We were finished by 8:30 and headed to Chicago.  Only problem was, when I'd made the plans for the day, I didn't take into account the time change BACK to central time for the day.  I'd known that Indiana was in the Eastern time zone, but not that our day in Chicago would be back in Central.  So that gave us an extra hour to kill.

 There it is

My plan to kill time if we arrived before the Museum of Art opened was to walk through a couple of parks and look at birds. Not a good plan. It was chilly and breezy and all the parks appeared to be closed for the season or simply deserted of bird life.  If I'd been alone, I'd have found a coffee shop, acquired a cuppa, and sat in the sun to people watch.

But that sort of thing never seems to appeal to Ed, so we walked through Millenium Park, saw the famous "bean", and then walked down to Lake Michigan and back. We didn't go out Navy Pier, a famous amusement park, because just the walking we did was enough to do a number on Ed's hip and back. He needed the exercise, but not like that--yuuck. No fun walking in pain.

 
 

 

 

 

The bean in Millenium Park:

When we got back it was near enough to lunch time (for our stomachs, at least, since they'd already started adjusting to eastern time) that we just went down to the parking garage, sat in the Jeep, and ate lunch.  Very neatly polishing off the last of our camping food.

Then the museum. Like wow and then some.  I was bowled over often, and I'm not all that easily bowled over.  Among other cool things we saw were
Some Monet,

That American thing,

Le Gran Chatte or whatever,

Plus a medieval armor display and a whole lot of other stuff.

We were very tired though. All that walking and standing would make anyone tire, and Ed had started off in pain. And didn't take an Aleve pill.   Plus, even though the first couple of hours in the museum were very pleasant, around mid-afternoon tons of people flooded in.  It was almost impossible to stand and stare at a the paintings from a decent distance without ten or twenty people wandering around in front of you.

 So after our many hours of gaping at art, we headed for the exit.  The StayPineapple hotel check-in time wasn't until 4pm, but we arrived at about 3:30 and the desk clerk didn't have an issue with that.
.
The only other thing I'd planned to do was to walk the "Magnificent Mile", a fancy shopping and business district in downtown.  But Ed was clearly too tired.  He'd have done it if I asked, but I looked at the situation and decided it was just too much.  We ordered delivery from Giordano's and watched an old Harry Potter episode.

The food wasn't very good.  The guy at the service center said that the whole deep-dish Chicago pizza was just a gimmick and that real Chicagoans ate the Tavern Style.  So that's what we ordered.  The sauce was good but the crust was like a biscuit crust and not tasty at all.   And I couldn't figure how how to use the online menu to do a half-and-half, so I just got Ed 's meat pizza and shared it.  No yummy veggies. So sad.

Nighttime views from our hotel windows:

Magnus Goes Home to Thor, Day 4

Sunday, October 27

At the Thor repair shop.  About seven RVs trickled in during the day--there were 13 here at last count. Are we in some kind of queue with possibly 13 motorhomes in front of us?

But first, the drive. We got up and got as early a start as possible, but still left at about the same time as yesterday--9:10.  We only had a 3-hour drive, but I wanted to get to Thor as quickly as possible. I was thinking they only had ten parking spots, but that was a mistake on my part--they have about 20. But still it was good to get there early.

The drive was very flat and pretty much uneventful. We had to circle around Indianapolis through some horrible awful road construction, but that was soon over and we were headed north on 31. I programmed in the directions that Thor had provided us, and so we were pretty sure there wouldn't be any weird low bridges or narrow roads.

 

 

It was very beautiful there on account of the autumn tree color display. Amazing!  More shades of orange than I ever thought existed, and an occasional burning bush of bright, bright red. A few spruces and pines for contrast,

But other than the trees, the terrain was flat and boring. All farmland, mostly corn but possibly some wheat already harvested. Very, very boring. We did cut through an Amish settlement right at 12pm and saw an assortment of buggies waiting or scurrying away. Maybe church was just over, or maybe we were hitting the tail end of that big funeral the lady next door told me about, later.

 

Almost there

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There!

Our site

With no Molly to walk, I put my chair out beside the motorhome, in the parking lot, and read a book. Until an unusual thing happened--the lady in the small Class C next door came over and chatted with me while I was reading (aka taking a nap) in the afternoon sunshine. She appeared to be traveling with four dachshunds but no human companions. Cool lady--she gave a quick rundown of her life--college at Denton, worked for police dept or some such in the Dallas area and then at Austin, finally moved to Tennessee with her husband, presumably retired. I didn't ask where he was now.

But when I ventured a comment about the books I was reading or the nature places that I wanted to explore, she showed no interest. So other than dogs and camping, I don't think we had much in common. So that's what we talked about.  And soon she had to get back to her dogs.

Magnus Goes Home to Thor, Day 3

Saturday, October 26 2024

Lovely drive through St Louis, except we had a misunderstanding about the road to take.

 And on to Indiana.  Bah.

 

Lake Haven Resort in Indianapolis -- We spent the night there because it was highly reviewed, convenient, and not too expensive. But, yuck!  Like a CAFO for RVs.  Here's my review.


 

Review: Lake Haven RV Resort
$56 site 93   gravel (I think), pull-thru, only barely long enough
Like staying in a motel room but with your own bed

Small RV park on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Conveniently located to all the Indianapolis stuff. Very nice and very efficient management; it was okay for an overnight stop for us.

Everything worked fine--water, sewer, 50-amp electricity--and was set up correctly. The pull-thru site was easy to get in and out of and the little driveways were well-labeled and only a little bit tight. Our site was just the right length for our 35' Class A and toad.

There was a picnic table and there were fire rings scattered throughout the park, so if we'd wanted a fire that would have been good. We didn't use the laundry or bathrooms.

But, yuck. It was extremely crowded and there was no breathing room at all. There were a few trees here and there, plus a little (mostly dry) pond by our site.  I didn't check out the dog park, but I didn't see any doggie relief stations--if there were any, they were near it.  There didn't seem to be any amenities or anything fun going on. There was a playground on the map, but it was tiny and nobody was using it.  In fact, I don't think I saw more than a couple of children around.  Most people seemed to park, go inside their RV, and stay there.  

Good for an overnight, but definitely not a destination.

 

The pond

 Our site was on the edge looking toward the pond,

But looking in the other direction, many, many RVs.