Long Summer

I know everybody has been telling me..Dad you haven't added anything to your so called BLOG since you made the first entry. Seeing the school bus go down the street in the morning reminds me that the summer is over. Margaret had a good portion of August off for vacation. We were planning on going to see Mount Rushmore, but when gas got over $4 a gallon we decided to abort the long trip and maybe do short day trips.

Margaret always says I need to be more creative in coming up with ideas of where we can go on these day journeys. Well I got creative. My juices were in high gear. The results of those moments will be described as I have time, but I promise to hit all of them in the next week.

We didn't do much during June. I took a couple of bicycle rides with Joe Monks from Christ the King. I found he and I both like to ride longer distances like 20-30 miles at a time. We went on a organized ride that visited a number Toledo area metro parks. The organizers provided lunch for a fee. Later we drove his car to Ann Arbor and traveled along Huron River trail. Last week we traveled to Port Clinton, parked the car outside Port Clinton at a Krogers and rode to Marblehead, had lunch and rode back about 30 miles. You can see Cedar Point from the lighthouse at Marblehead.

I told Margaret about how beautiful the views at Marblehead were and we decided to spend a day exploring the area. I took her to the lighthouse and to lunch at a roadside restaurant.

I found a cute little park out near Marblehead that I thought Margaret might like. It was just south of Marblehead on Rte. 163. We spent some time their walking and reading our ever present novels. There always seems to be a breeze coming off the lake, even on very hot days.

Instead of jumping around with different dates, I'm going to try to take you thru the late summer chronologically.


On July 26th we took off early from Toledo and headed west. We chose Amish Acres. We had been talking about places to visit that weren't too far. I think Napenee, Indiana is about 160 miles away. It's close to South Bend.

This place is modeled after a working Amish farm. While taking a walking tour, we saw the cutest baby turkey chicks prancing around with their mother. I had never seen a baby turkey before.

Those little white dots are the chicks.

Part of our ticket price of admission was a ride on a hay cart to the outer edge of the farm. They had a schoolhouse setup. Long tables and benches dominated the single room. Children still go to bathroom in an outhouse.

Amish children only go to school through the eighth grade. They feel there is nothing beyond the eighth grade that they need to learn to have a full productive life.

These people create the most beautiful blankets and quilts. It's hard to believe that people who wear such plain colored clothes could sew these multi-colored quilts.

We learned that any person who is not Amish is called "English" no matter what your nationality is. Amish men wear beards, but no mustaches. They can have a telephone for emergency purposes, but it has to an inconvenient distance from their house like at the end of their driveway.

After all that walking we decided to experience a real Amish sit down family dinner. They have this old barn that was converted into a restaurant. We had chicken and beef along with all the fixings mash potatoes, gravy, vegetables etc. When the desert homemade pie tray came out I about died. There had to be 6 or 7 different choices.

While we were eating a man came up to our table and asked us if we were going to the play. SIDEBAR ....Let me explain. Amish Acres has national company of actors that take up residence there for 9 months a year performing Broadway plays. The play being performed while we were there was "Carousel". He said he was the leader of a bus group of blue haired senior citizens from Chicago. He had 2 extra tickets that were paid for and he hated to see them go to waste. We thought sure for free why not. Seeing a full Broadway play in the middle of nowhere Indiana was a real treat.