September 1st, 2005, Thursday.  We were up early and we got on the road from the Upper Peninsula, Michigan to St. Clair, Michigan, at 9 AM.  We stayed in contact with our friends, Carol and Paul Goldberg, via walkie talkies as we made our way from the UP.  We met up at the Flying J truck stop for lunch in Saginaw before going our separate ways.  We got into the Thousand Trails Campground in St. Claire at about 3:30.  We were able to find a full hook-up site with 30 amp service, something we were concerned about because of the Labor Day week-end.  We expected that we would have trouble finding a spot like that since the campsites are "first come, first served".  We went for a walk after we got settled, and checked out the pool!  Found out the pool was a heated one - it was just a perfect temperature.  Shelley decided to take the plunge and  went for a swim.  The temperature was just so perfect she literally just walked in and went swimming - something she never does!!  We did have an element of frustration tonight due to the cell phone service.  We had 5 bar cell phone service just a few feet from the entrance to the campground, but at our site we had only one bar - so that means no cell service or internet at the coach.  While the campsites are beautiful, they are covered with trees - so....we can't get satellite tv service here either.  [St. Clair, MI - Thousand Trails - 42.52 N / 82.33 W]

Thanks to Rags, we got up early on Friday morning, but we didn't have to rush, as the day's schedule was pretty empty.  We first drove to St. Clair to pick up our mail.  We were shocked when we stopped for gas along the way and had to pay $3.399 for regular.  The rest of the trip was through a neighborhood of really nice homes on really large lots.  We also drove along the St. Clair River (which separates the US and Canada) for part of the way.  Fortunately, when we got to the post office, our mail was waiting for us.  We then went to a shopping mall where Shelley went shopping at Farmer Jack's and Norm got a haircut at Fantastic Sam's.  We returned to the campground for a relaxing afternoon and evening; Norm went through the mail and took care of the bills while Shelley did 2 washes and read and enjoyed the great weather.  After dinner we went into the clubhouse and played ping pong for a while.

Saturday was another reasonably quiet day.  At 11 AM we went to a manager's meeting, we read a little and took care of odds and ends.  Shelley gave Rags a bath.  We had no cell phone service at our campsite, so we had to walk about 1/4 mile to make phone calls or download our e-mail.  We also could download e-mail via dial up. At 5:30 pm the camp ground sponsored a pot luck dinner with hamburgers and hotdogs; we were surprised at the small turnout of about 2 people.  We played ping pong again after dinner. 

We had a quiet morning planned for Sunday.  We expected to leave the campground at around 2:30 PM so we had plenty of time until then.  As luck would have it, we met the first new people at Thousand Trails on the day we planned to leave.  We met Mary and Tom King at around noon.  Tom was selling a dry wash for cars and motorhomes and we bought a bottle to try.  Then we met Mo, who has a 40 foot Holiday Rambler Ambassador and a schnauzer and is scheduled to be in Elkhart on Thursday.  We'll get to meet him and his wife there.  After we left St. Clair we drove to Bloomfield, a suburb of Detroit, where Norm's 2nd cousin Reyna and Sandy Hansell lived.  We parked in the driveway for the evening.  We visited for a while in their house and realized that this was the first typical house that we were in since we left Rocky Hill in early May.  And it was a large house sitting on three acres of property. I didn't envy all that grass that had to be mowed.  Since we had never been to Detroit before, we get a tour of the downtown area before we parked nearby.  It was sad to see sowntown Detroit.  Major streets were lined with lots and ruined homes, and there just didn't seem to be any reason for many people to be there.  We walked to Greektown before we found the restaurant where we were to have dinner.  The food was really great and we all walked out pleasantly stuffed.  Sandy then drove us to Royal Oak, where we wandered through the neighborhood that was alive with people walking and eating and talking.  We knew that we were in or near a big city....the small towns that we have visited during the last few months just didn't have this much life.  [Bloomfield, MI - Hansell driveway - 42.32 N /83.18 W]

On Monday, September 5 (the 52nd anniversary of my bar mitzvah - wow, hard to believe) we had coffee and breakfast with Sandy and Reyna, backed the motorhome down their long driveway, hooked up our CRV, and we were on our way.  Despite the fact that today is Labor Day, there was virtually no traffic as we headed headed southwest to Elkhart, where Monaco has a factory and a major service center.  We followed the directions shouted out by our GPS and soon found ourselves settled in the lot behind the service center where there are facilities for about 50 coaches to spend the night while the coaches are being serviced.  Before we knew it, someone came by and said that they were going to get together at 4 PM for appetizers and then we would all have dinner.  About 25 people showed up and sat at tables under canvas and enjoyed commiserating with each other about the length of stays we expected at the service center.  We even met a few people who were here when we were here last May.  It was really a fun evening. [Elkhart, Indiana - Monaco Service Center - 41.40 N / 85.60 W]

Tuesday morning, and the rest of the time that we will be in Elkhart, was an early morning.  We need to be ready at 6:30 when the technician comes to take the rig so he can work on it.  At 8:45 we went on a tour sponsored by Monaco.  About 15 of us got in a large van and took off for South Bend.  First we went to the South Bend Chocolate Factory.  They don't make chocolate there, but take the chocolate and make candies with it.  They turn out between 7,000 and 9,000 pounds of candy each day.  It was amazing how much of the work is done by hand...very little automation.  We got lots of free samples, but one of the highlights was seeing a conveyer belt with two women at the end taking the candy and putting it in paper cups  It so much reminded us so much of the famous Lucy and Ethel skit from TV.  We then took a tour of Notre Dame.  The tour was really interesting and lasted a little over an hour.  The campus was beautiful with lots of traditional looking buildings and really nice landscaping.  There are about 11,000 students attending Notre Dame on the 125 acre campus.  Most live on campus.  About 80% of the students are Catholic, 15% more are other Christians, and the remaining 5% are non-Christian.  We got to see the famous football stadium, the basilica and also the golden dome.  We left Notre Dame and we then went to eat at the Emporium.  We got back to the Monaco Service Center at about 2:30 about an hour before our coach was returned to us.

Lucy & Ethel lookalikes!!	Shelley lighting a candle for Amy at the Grotto	"Touchdown" Jesus building	The famous gold dome	Organ inside Basilica	Inside Basilica

We got up at 5:45 A.M. and Jeremy picked up our coach at 6:45 AM.  We went out for breakfast with another couple.  Later in the morning, Shelley did some arts and crafts with some others while Norm went to the drug store for some prescriptions and picked up the NY Times, which he has missed greatly while they've been on the road. Then he went to the RV Museum with some others.  The museum was nearby and pretty interesting, with relics dating as far back as 1915.  Then the museum director came by and told us all sorts of interesting stories.  How Holiday Rambler was bought by Harley Davidson for $65 million and then Harley Davidson sold it to Monaco for about $22 million.  How Merton Miller, an Amish man started working for Monaco as a carpenter, ended up as one of the top wheels, and then founded Newmar with some associates.  The employees at Newmar are about 80% Amish.  And how the name "Holiday Rambler" came when the original owner looked out his window, and in the driveway were an Oldsmobile "Holiday" and a Nash "Rambler".      

The next week and a half was business as usual.  We did some things, but it was a pretty boring time.  One evening we went with 16 others to dinner at Esther Miller's house.  Esther is an Amish woman whose husband died a  number of years ago.  She makes a living by having people in for a delicious dinner.  We also went to the movies one evening with another couple.  The movies was "the 40 year Old Virgin" and it was so terrible that we left after about 30 minutes.  The company has a concierge for those of us having repairs done, and she does a 2 mile walk most mornings.  Norm got his early morning exercise about half of the days.    On Tuesday we went to the town of Shipshewana where they have a giant flea market and a cheese factory where they process about 60,000 pounds of milk each day.  We also stopped at a small restaurant where most of the customers and help were Amish.  On Thursday, they had finished most of the mechanical repairs and they brought our coach into the paint shop. When that happens, you can't get your coach back in the evening, so we stayed at a nearby motel.  And on Saturday, 9/17 we went to the town of Nappannee  where they had an apple festival.  There was a typical small town parade, a carnival with rides, food stands, and a number of stands where they sold all sorts of stuff.  And, surprise of surprises, on Friday evening our friends, Donna and Jay Blumenthal showed up. [They are the ones who got us involved with Chai and FMCA.] They needed some very minor work done, and while the technician was taken care of this, he noted a minor adjustment that he thought should also be done.  jay told him to go ahead and do it, and he was soon done.  However, since that minute, their coach has been pulling strongly to one side, and the company has not been able to take care of the problem.  As of now, they have been here for a week.  That's what happens when we overplan.

Eating at Esther Miller's house

Our coach went back to the paintshop on Monday morning, 9/29, so we stayed in the motel on Monday evening.  Right on schedule, we were told that we would be done with painting on Tuesday, 9/20, and we were really finished by mid-afternoon.  A few odds and ends were left, and we were told that we could probably check out of Camp Monaco on late Wednesday or very early Thursday.  Back in the campground behind the service bays we met Steve and Virginia Rich, who lived just south of Boston.  They were interesting folks, so we went out for breakfast with them on Wednesday morning and made plans to meet for dinner.  Meanwhile, we got a call from Leon and Susan Hananel, our Chai friends from North Carolina.  They were in Illinois, and when they heard where we were, they decided to change their plans and drive a few hundred miles to meet us.  We went to dinner at the Olive Garden with Stephen and Virginia, and Leon and Susan got there just s the four of us were finishing dinner.  We were really happy to see our good friends from the Highlands of North Carolina.

On Thursday morning we checked out of Camp Monaco, with just about everything finished.  We did, however, make an appointment to stop in Wildwood, FL (where Monaco has another repair facility) in February.  We formed a 2 RV caravan with Leon and Susan and started heading southeast.  W were going to visit our daughter and her family in Leesburg VA while they were going to Winchester, VA (near Leesburg) to visit Susan's sister.  The trip was fun but uneventful.  We ate lunch together on both Thursday and Friday, and stayed at Walmart in Cambridge Ohio on Thursday evening.  Its always fun to meet friends when your out on the road.

We spent Friday evening through Tuesday morning hanging out with Jan, Rob, Zack and Lilly.  One of the highlights was watching 4 year old Zack play soccer.  He scored 2 goals, but more than half of the goals scored during the game were kicked into the wrong goal.  We got some computer help from Rob, who also helped us to update the database in our GPS.  Lilly was walked to school by her grandfather and we just had a generally good time hanging out with family and watching the grandkids as they grow up.

On Tuesday we drove up I-95 and arrived in Edison NJ to visit Shelley's family. Her parents and her sister Cindy's family all joined us for dinner.  On Wednesday morning, September 28, Shelley, Cindy and their mom went for a 1 hour Yoga class.  Cindy and Shelley did great, but the third member of the team complained of lots of aches and pains.  We had bagels and lox for breakfast before heading north and east toward CT.  Our choices of parking places is limited, and our friends, Ron and Gail Talbot graciously offered us use of their driveway while we were in CT.  As soon as we set up the motorhome and detached the car, we drove up to the cemetery to visit Amy's grave.  On our way there, we ran into one of Amy's friends who had just visited the grave.  It sure made us feel good to know that Amy was remembered by her friends.

A short list of what we did in CT follows:   

1. Thurs - 9/29 - dentist visits, Little Alex and Stacy and us had dinner with the Talbots
2. Friday - 9/30 - Babysitting little Alex.
3. Sat - 10/1 - Norm went sailing with his friend Wally on Jeff Rosow's boat while Shelley went with Stacy and little Alex to a book sale at the library and a picnic.  Later, we both went to Wally and Ingrid for a delicious dinner.  It is so nice to be with good friends.
4. Sun - 10/2 - We went to visit Norm's sister Barbara.  His brother-in-law Albert as well as mom and aunt were also there.  They had spent the day making gefilte fish.  Albert and Shelley went apple picking and we had pizza for dinner.
5. Mon - 10/3 - Norm had a doctor's visit to plan his colonoscopy.  During the afternoon he started the gigantic roject of waxing the motorhome.  Later in the day we went to our friends, Howard and Barbara Wein for a pre-Rosh Hashanah dinner.
6. Tuesday - 10/4 - Shelley felt under the weather, so Norm went to religious services by himself.