Then, we drove up through Indiana and stopped at TT Horseshoe Lakes. The sites are spacious and there were lots of Canadian Geese and there are 11 lakes at the park.
From there, we drove up through Illinois to the CAT RV Engine Club rally in Bloomington. Gerald went on a tour of the Caterpillar Engine Plant near Peoria and he really enjoyed it. This the group photo.
Click on the photo to enlarge. Gerald is near the center at the edge of the bulldozer blade.
We picked up with our Beaver Club group and caravaned with them to the next rally in Amana, Iowa. The Amana Colonies are a really interesting group of villages of German descent. We highly recommend a stop here if you are in the area. There is a 150 year old Woolen Mill that makes blankets, throws and scarves, a bakery, wineries, restaurants, furniture makers and more!
http://www.amanacolonies.org/
We have seen more corn fields than we could have ever imagined!
From there, we caravaned to Owatonna, MN. Here we are taking a break at a rest area. We were so lucky that no other vehicles were there and all of us got to park together.
This is a photo of the typical landscape, corn fields, barns and silos.
This is a old barn we were told was about 100 years old.
The Beaver Ambassador Club Lead-In rally was at the fairgrounds at Owatonna, MN. We were treated to a trip to the host's commercial pig farm. They raise 300,000 pigs a year and grow 2000 acres of corn for a portion of their feed. It was truly an amazing operation, very technical and scientific. They sell their pigs when they get to 260 lb because that's the size of pork chops that the consumer prefers.
This is Gerald standing by their combine. It was huge!
Gerald also went on a tour of an ethanol plant that he found very interesting.
While in Owatonna, there was a severe thunderstorm with hail that went by just north of us, so we were happy that it missed us!
Next, we continued up to St. Paul to the FMCA convention. There were 2400 motorhomes there and the fairgrounds were very nice. We did have a couple of severe thunderstorms and one included a tornado watch where we were evacuated to one of the buildings for safety as they were expecting very high winds and hail. Our weather station registered the highest wind at 42 mph, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Gerald took a tour of the Cummins-Onan generator plant while in St. Paul. Glenda found a great bead shop and visited there with some crafting friends. There are lots of seminars and vendors at the convention as well as there were 600 new motorhomes for sale to walk through.
We met another greyhound the evening of the evacuation and during the week, we saw a couple from Tennessee several times who own two brindle girlie greyhounds, Libby and Trixie. Trixie is Marquis' 2nd cousin!! We really enjoyed visiting with them.
Today, we left and we are now headed west to cooler temperatures, planning to stop next at Mt. Rushmore and then onto Washington and Oregon.
