Last Day and Final Observations 7-28 & 7-29-2015

We actually had time this morning to get up leisurely and go have breakfast.  We decided to take a ride to the Indiana Grand Race Track and Casino.  It took us about a half hour to get there from the hotel.  This is a huge complex about 20 miles south east of the city of Indianapolis.  I think we were both surprised at the size of this place.  We parked and went inside the casino.  The room was huge and very nice with self serve soft drink machines.  The thing we found so strange was there were more men than woman playing the slots.  Most of the time we were there we had fun and it wasn't overly smoky but it wasn't really busy when we got there either.  We were getting hungry and decided to leave and find a place for lunch.  When we were leaving we saw horses on the track.  We went back in and went to the restaurant in the clubhouse where we watched a couple of the horse races and ordered lunch.  The service was horrible in there although when we finally got our food, it was very good.  Although I didn't bet on any races, just picking out names and the colors they were wearing, I picked two that were in the top 3 in the races we watched.  I guess that is as good a way to pick a horse as any.  When we left there, Betty our GPS, told us to turn the opposite way we thought we should go.  We kept making turns and had no idea where we were.  Finally we pulled up to the intersection where we got off the expressway but on the opposite side of the expressway.  Debbie and I kept staring at each other and finally said "how is it possible we got on this side of the expressway when we never cross over or under it at any point?"  We are still baffled as to how that happened...it just seemed to be an impossibility.  Heading home we got caught in a terrible storm and downpour where we couldn't see 10 feet in front of the car.  Luckily we drove out of it a few miles later.  We spent the balance of the night packing and repacking for me to fit everything in I bought.  We can't believe that the trip is over already.  Since Debbie is having "horse babies" this year we probably won't see any more of each other until next summer so we hated to see this trip come to an end.  We slept well and loaded the car, then we had breakfast and got the last of the things from our room.  Debbie dropped me off at the airport then started her six plus hour drive home.  She was going to make a side trip to Terre Haute and visit the Grand Traverse Pie Company.  This was the place we visited that had the great pie.  She wanted to get one to take home.  My flight back to Atlanta was uneventful and I was home by late afternoon.

 

 

 



Final thoughts.....

We didn't choose these states because there were things we wanted to see or do but because they were the three states I had not visited.  We tried to find things in all the places that we went to do to make it interesting.  Major surprise...Wisconsin is a beautiful state!  It is neat, clean, garbage and trash free including the low income areas and everywhere we went there the flowers were gorgeous and the people friendly.  I think Debbie would agree we enjoyed our time in this state as there were flowers everywhere you looked.  The scenery was beautiful.  The U P or Upper Peninsula of Michigan was the most boring and sleep inducing of the scenery we saw.  Miles of nothing.  However, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is beautiful and very worth the trip there.  However, if the weather had not been as beautiful as it was the day we took the cruise, I don't know that my opinion would have been the same.  Sault Ste. Marie was a cute little town and seeing the locks and International Bridge was very cool.  Again, we had great weather and although it was cool, it was sunny.  It is amazing when you look on a map and see how far north you really are there.  St. Ignace and Mackinac Island were very nice and we enjoyed that as well.  Sleeping Bear Dunes was not what we expected and I felt a waste of the time it took to find it.  However, Traverse City which we had to go through to get there was a beautiful and picturesque lakeside town.  We of course stopped at the pie place there but it was just a very pretty place.  The balance of our time in Michigan was just ok.  Debbie did a lot of driving for little reward in the list of things she wanted to see.  The covered bridge was cool but even though we could drive over it, it wasn't nearly as pretty as the ones we saw in New England.  It took us forever to find it too.  The surprise was Shipshewana, Indiana.  It was a cute Amish community just across the state line from Michigan.  Debbie and I both enjoyed shopping in their bulk grocery store, seeing the buggy's and locals on their bicycles.  We thought we would see more of it as we drove the "Heritage Trail".  We stopped in Middlebury but didn't find it as much fun as it was in Shipshewana.  Betty got us all messed up again in Elkhart which Debbie knew was the trailer and RV capital of the world.  It was true...Most major RV brands had factories there.  Other than that, not much else that I can remember as noteworthy.  I have joined Debbie and Kay in the 50 club.  We now can concentrate on visiting the states we liked the most.

As usual, thanks to my friend Dave, Carol Calvin and Kay this time for being faithful blog followers even if you had to wait until I got home to read this one.