Indiana, Remington - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - Caboose Lake Campground

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW KIM!!

Our great week with AJ, Kim and the twins is coming to an end, we will be leaving here tomorrow morning heading to our site in Markleville, IN (daughter Amanda’s second driveway) where we will be until mid-September.

Our sight at Caboose Lake Campground was supposed to be 50 amp full service.  We got the bike unloaded and the coach backed in when we discovered the site they gave us was only 30 amp service.  We thought we could get by on that but even the 30 amp service proved to be sketchy in our sight and several around us.  The same thing happened in this area of the campground last year, I was hoping they would have taken care of the problem.  I understand the management doesn’t really think it is a problem.  Several of us had to relocate to sites that had better electric service.  This is us in our first site, I didn’t get a picture of the site where we ended up – I was mildly perturbed.

We have enjoyed watching Jackson and Braelynn participate in their summer activities.  Braelynn is quite the swimmer.  She is racking up a lot of first and second place ribbons this summer.  We got to see her compete a couple of times.

Here she is taking off for the 25 meter free-style event.

She won!!

Jackson says his favorite is baseball.  He’s a great hitter.

We also stopped in to see one of Jackson’s wrestling practices.  He is the one in gray.

The advantage of this park is that there is a nice lake and an area with floatation devices where the kids can play.  They especially like the hippo slide which is a 35’ high water slide.  This isn’t a good picture, but you get the idea of how big it is.

AJ, Kim and the kids came to the campground on Sunday to have lunch with us and then play on the “family fun zone activities” which included the hippo slide.  We read the brochure they gave us at check in which states the family fun zone is open on Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm.

To get them in and set up for the fun zone required the payment of $8.00 per person to enter the campground and a fun zone activities wristband which costs $15.00 per person regardless of age.  (NOTE:  Indiana Beach which is about 20 minutes away is $22 to $27 per person, looks like a much better bargain). We had lunch and then headed for the hippo slide.  We arrived at the slide at 1:55 p.m. and were told it would be closing at 2:00 – WHAT!!!  We were standing in front of this sign which appears to me to state it is open until 5:00 p.m. on Sunday – same as our brochure.  We were informed by an extremely rude teenager that if we had a problem we should check with the office.

The sign on the porch at the office also states the hippo slide is open Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. – what are we missing?

What we didn’t know was that Sunday was an “orange day”.  They have a schedule that is on their website that shows totally different times than all of the signs they have posted at the campground.  The days in orange on this schedule show the hippo slide being open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.  If grandma was po’d about the electricity you should have seen me after this.  I went to speak to the manager and was informed that she didn’t have time and she had no intention of coming out to talk to me so she sent out the same obnoxious teenager instead – bad move.  I’ve never written a bad campground review, but I intend to do several on this one, I just have to figure out how to condense my frustration into a short paragraph.

Jackson and Braelynn were oblivious to grandma’s frustration and had a good time in the lake and on the inflatables.  However, AJ and Kim received nothing in return for their $15 wristband fees.

Braelynn finally decided to take a turn in the dunk tank.

On Monday we celebrated our 7^th wedding anniversary and Kim’s birthday at Aydas, a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Rensselaer.

Today we had lunch with Kim’s parents, Dave and Danita Rodibaugh.  What a great meal – we even had strawberry pie for dessert.  It’s been hard to maintain our weight loss with all of this good food we have been invited to enjoy on our travels back home.

Greg had his annual checkup Wednesday with his heart doctor and a pacemaker device checkup – everything looks really good.  Both doctors were impressed with his weight loss and decrease in blood pressure.  I love him and this life we are living, got to keep him healthy.

Indiana, Remington - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - Caboose Lake Campground

On Sunday night we had a wonderful time at the home of some new friends, Bill and Bonnie.  They live in a wonderfully renovated old farm house that is well over 100 years old.  Bonnie is an artist and an antique collector so they have lots of one of a kind things to surround them.  Bill treated us to a ride on his “margarita wagon”.  It’s a flatbed trailer with four benches attached that he pulls behind his 4-wheel drive tractor on trails he has cut through the woods of their 150+ acres.  What a great time that was!  The grandkids got to take a turn at driving the tractor so we got smacked by some branches a few times.  We ended the evening roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire – couldn’t ask for better.

Monday it rained really hard and the wind blew until there were whitecaps on the lake.  It was a good day to stay inside and do some cooking and cleaning.  Greg is interested in the baseball college world series so he didn’t mind being inside either.  Tuesday afternoon we stayed with the twins while dad and mom worked.

This afternoon son AJ, Kim and the twins planned to come over to swim, but the lake was closed for swimming because all of the rain we have had lately had upset the bacteria balance.  They did get to enjoy the “Hippo” water slide though.  I think I read that this slide was at least 35 feet tall.  Just climbing up the stairs to the top looked a little daunting to me, but they did it over and over.

 

 

This is Jackson coming down.

 

And here is Braelynn.

Then it was girls against boys in a water balloon fight, not sure who won but they all got really wet.

 

 

Jackson and Braelynn enjoyed the smaller water slide too.  Jackson soaked me as he came down.

 

 

Rain and wind came through just as we were setting up to cook hot dogs over the fire.  We hauled everything inside and still had a very good supper.  The weather cleared after supper and we were able to get outside to roast marshmallows for some s’mores.

This little guy ended up in my chair with me.  I wasn’t so happy about that but Braelynn was thrilled.

 

 

Going to miss these guys when we leave.

Indiana, Remington - Monday, June 16, 2014 - Touring more of NW Indiana

I started out this morning placing a phone call to the jury manager of the Minnehaha County Court.  When we received our mail on Friday it contained a summons for me to report for grand jury selection on July 8 in Sioux Falls, SD.  I placed a call on Friday, but got a voice message.  I was relieved somewhat that the voice message mentioned that if you were a full time RVr you just had to indicate such on the form you received.  However, the form I received wasn’t the one they mentioned so I still needed to talk to them.  South Dakota really does understand the lifestyle of full time RVrs.  The lady I spoke to today told me what I needed to fill out and send in so she could send me an exemption letter.  Thank goodness, because the summons mentioned that if you were selected for grand jury duty you had to be available for the next 18 months.  South Dakota was beautiful in August last year but I’m pretty sure it won’t be that way for the next 18 months.

We found a couple more places to explore today.  The first is Yesteryear’s Meats and Specialty Shoppe in Demotte.

This is an old fashioned meat market, grocery store and deli.

 

 

They have a small area where you can eat in.

I selected the sloppy joe special with 2 wings and a side.  Greg chose the barbequed pork sandwich and side.  Both of us chose County Cole Slaw for our side, it had a nice sweet and sour poppy seed dressing.

Their meat market had some fabulous looking meat.  We decided against buying any meat because our next stop was going to be a shrimp farm.  They make their own sausage and summer sausage – I was tempted by the summer sausage since we bought cheese and wine yesterday.

The next stop was JT Shrimp between Demotte and Wheatfield.  This is a family-owned saltwater shrimp farm.  We decided to take a tour of the facility which is $5 per person.  While we were waiting for the owner some ladies came in to purchase some shrimp.  The owner asked his wife if she wanted to conduct the tour or catch the shrimp.  It was at that moment that I realized if I wanted to take home shrimp I was taking them home live – oh, dear.

The temperature here is consistent between 84 and 85 degrees.  The water is filtered and recycled over and over.  Keeping the temperature and the nutrients at the right point is a full time job.  These farm raised shrimp are a lot more labor intensive than the ones in the ocean.  Each of these tanks starts out with 7,000 tiny baby shrimp brought in in tanks somewhat larger than a large picnic cooler.  I think he said it takes about 3 months for them to get to harvesting size.  And, when it comes time to harvest there are only about 2,200 of them left - some die and some are eaten by the other shrimp.

It was hard to take pictures because of all the bright lights.  They said it was necessary to leave the lights on because the shrimp jump out of the tanks if it gets dark or even if there are a lot of shadows.  Do the shrimp in the ocean live in bright lights?  The netting around the top helps keep them in.

The shrimp shed their shells from their head to tail every three days.  The ones with the darker shells are getting ready to shed.

We had brought a cooler so we decided to get a pound of shrimp to take home, it runs $18 a pound.  While they were catching our shrimp, I got a few cooking pointers from the owner’s wife.  Greg leaned down and whispered he wondered whether or not they screamed like lobsters when you put them in the boiling water – he wasn’t helping.  They packed the shrimp in ice which makes them pretty inactive.

We got the shrimp home and into the pot of boiling water, after three minutes we drained them and covered them with ice.

 

 

By the way, they don’t scream.  Thank goodness, I had enough trouble just giving them a stir in the water, all I could see was little eyes staring up at me.

After they had cooled Greg removed the heads and I peeled them.  Since there is no mud, they don’t have mud veins so they don’t have to be deveined.  They were great!  These shrimp don’t have the normal “shrimpy” smell and the taste is very mild.  We enjoyed them on top of a green salad along with some of the wine and cheese we bought yesterday.

Indiana, Remington - Saturday, June 14, 2014 - Tour of the Area

The weather was just too nice to not get out on the motorcycle today.

 

 

Before we left the campgrounds we walked around and took a few pictures.  It’s a nice campground, more family oriented than most we have stayed at.  Since they charge extra for the water activities, it could get a little expensive if you have a big family.  The majority of these activities are not something that we would take advantage of, but we may get the grandkids out for a day if the weather stays nice.  Since this campground is right next to I-65, if road noise bothers you this probably isn’t the place for you.  We are at the back of the campground where the sites are bigger and inside the coach we don’t notice the noise.  It might be hard to tent camp though.

 

Our first stop was Carpenter Creek Cellars.  This winery is just off of state road 16 and has been in business for a couple of years.  They have planted their own grapes but itwill be about 4 years before those grapes can be used in their wine production. 

 

 

The tasting room is a former draft horse barn.  I was too busy enjoying the free wine tasting to take any pictures inside.  Most of their wines are sweet or semi-sweet which we prefer over dry wines.

They had live music today.  I don’t remember the name of the group but it was three guitar players and “Bongo Larry”.  Their music was supposed to be mainly Beatles songs, but I think the bongos threw me off, I didn’t recognize some of them.  “Bongo Larry” is the guy in the blue shirt.

 

They drew a large crowd.  I think many of these people were attending the same class reunion.

 

We opted for a couple of rocking chairs in the shade on the patio instead of sitting out in the sun.

From the winery we headed north a short way to Fair Oaks Farms.  I wanted to see how much they had changed since grandson Tyler and I visited there several years ago.

We didn’t pay the admission required to go into any of the exhibits or to go on the tour of the dairy facilities.  We just walked around and looked at the well-manicured grounds and the outside activities for kids.

We stopped in the café/gift shop and did some cheese tasting.  After several samples Greg said we had to stop, they were all starting to taste the same.  We selected a sweet Swiss and an aged gouda to bring home.

They have a new restaurant opening July 1, 2014.  We won't be here then so we'll have to check it out the next time we are up here.

 

Our final destination was Earl’s Dining in Brooks, IN.  This place received rave reviews for son A.J. and a couple of his friends.  So we decided to celebrate our anniversary with Earl.  I think this must be a likeness of Earl since it was on the awning, the menus and this carving on the wall.

We pulled into Brooks at 4:30.  Earl’s wasn’t supposed to open until 5:30.  Brooks is a very quiet small town at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon.

 

About the only sound was the “Oldies” radio station that was playing from speakers attached to all of the light poles.

We found a nice bench across the street from Earl’s and watched for some activity.

About 5:00 a couple of cars pulled up and the occupants got in the front door.  Earl’s is the building with the black awnings.  Earl’s, the hardware store and bank seem to be the main businesses in Brook.  When we saw these people go in we followed.  Every table inside had a “reserved” sign on it.  We were able to use one of the tables that had a later reservation time.

I think Earl’s used to be the IGA store, the décor was rustic and just great.

 

 

Their special tonight was prime rib.  On Friday night they have all you can eat catfish and perch.  We chose the prime rib for our entrée, it was a good choice.  Even with choosing the smaller portion we both brought half of it home.

One of the choices for appetizers was Scotch Eggs.  Greg had never heard of them but thought they sounded good so he gave them a try.  They are hard boiled eggs covered with sausage and then deep fried.  They were served with a spicy dark mustard.  He declared them delicious.

Looks like things pick up in town once Earl’s opens the door.  The food was definitely good, we’ll look forward to eating here again when we are in northern Indiana.

 

 

In addition to our leftovers from Earl’s we brought home wine and cheese.

We’ll be joining daughter-in-law Kim’s family tomorrow for Father’s Day and June birthday celebrations.  I’ll have a new bracelet to wear thanks to granddaughter Braelynn – it goes with just about anything.

I forgot to mention in last night’s post that the grandkids had some toasted marshmallows in s’mores, but grandson Jackson decided that he liked them “raw” right out of the bag better.