Mormons, Harleys and Truman

With Mormon books to keep us from boredom, we headed from Nauvoo to Independence, Missouri (the supposed site of the Garden of Eden as well as the site for Christ’s second coming – according to Joe Smith). We had a campsite in the middle of town- in fact, within walking distance of all three of the LDS Visitors Centers. The Mormons/Salt Lake City group had their own visitor’s center. The Community of Christ (the smallest of the three) had a visitors center and church (built on the site of the original stones set by Joseph Smith). The Church of Christ (formerly RLDS) had their “Dairy Whip” temple and auditorium. We, of course, visited all three.

At the Mormon/SLC group, we got the standard film and the young female guide giving us her personal witness to the truth of the faith. (Interestingly, the film was done without any speaking parts. It showed the miracles of Jesus followed by the story of his visit to the America’s. Virtually all of the America’s footage showed little brown people looking remarkably like South/Central American Indians. It would be quite a propaganda film to attract the peoples of South America.).

At the Community of Christ, we met a very nice man who took the time to explain the differences between the various LDS churches. And, at the Church of Christ, we got a personal tour of their new temple.

As a break from the Mormons, we spent some time in Kansas City exploring the city. The city felt like Cleveland years ago- a few pockets of older neighborhoods with some character that were filled with restaurants and clubs, a new development with “the stores of Newbury Street” and a significant part of the city left to decay. In the city limits of Kansas City, there was only one building designated on the National Register of Historic Buildings- and it was at 18th and Vine, the old Negro Jazz area.

Independence, the home of Harry Truman, was a charming little town. We had a great German dinner at the Rheinlander Restaurant, toured Harry Truman’s home and bought strudel at a Croatian bakery.

The highlight- a trip to the Harley Davidson "Vehicle and Powertrain Operations" plant. We timed our visit perfectly- they had an open house at the plant- so it was a free-form walk through the plant with the chance to talk to any of the assembly line workers- not a canned tour. The KC plant does assembly of the dyna-glide and the sportster models and just started doing assembly of both the frame and engine for their new V-Rod. I did have a great tour guide- John..... I not only got the plant tour, but a full explanation of all the pieces and parts. It was fascinating. After all these motorhome factory tours- and the almost total lack of automation, I was surprised to see the robotic technology at the Harley plant- huge robots doing the welding, polishing, frame-bending, and painting.

Finding a family connection...

The drive through Iowa seemed to last forever. After a terrifying ride on a narrow toll bridge across the Mississippi, we finally got into Nauvoo, Illinois. The entire town was Mormon and the first thing John had me do was ask where we could buy wine and beer. This was not an easy task- since Mormons don’t drink alcohol- they don’t even drink anything with caffeine! Our campground manager was a dyed in the wool Mormon who told us long stories about his ancestors and their role in the pilgrimage to Salt Lake.

We stopped at the LDS bookstore- snagged a Joe Smith plate and marveled at the young (20 year olds) women in their long skirts with their 50 year old husbands.

We started our Mormon pilgrimage at the Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith was murdered. We had the story told by a Morman elder and again via their canned film and audio presentations in the jail. The LDS Church has put a tremendous amount of money into presenting their story via extremely high quality video presentations in all of their major pilgrimage sites. We think that it’s to make sure that the story is told consistently and at a high level. After seeing where Joe was killed, we went to the LDS Visitors Center in Nauvoo. We saw the requisite film about Joe’s life and prophecies and started to walk around the exhibits. As we stood in front of the “Government in Nauvoo” exhibit, we found ourselves looking at two of John’s ancestors. The Mormons had a short tenure in Nauvoo- only enough time for 4 mayors to hold office. Two of them were Spencers- one was John’s great, great, great, great grandfather, Daniel Spencer and the other Daniel’s brother, Orson.

Seeing the faces of his ancestors started us on our own search for any records of these people. We spent a morning at the Land and Records Center and walked away with pages of information on the lives of Daniel, Orson and their children. As we started to put together a simple family tree, we began to see the complications- Daniel and his son, Claudius Victor, had both embraced the concept of polygamy whole-heartedly. It took a bit of time to try to figure out which of their multiple wives fit into John’s family tree.

Winnebago...

On our drive south, we couldn’t miss the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa. The tour was quite unlike anything we’d seen in other motorhome factory tours. Winnebago was truly a manufacturing plant complete with some degree of automation on a large scale. (Didn't get to see the "drop test" -but, when we came back from the tour to a broken refrigerator, we would have considered a drop test for our "Maby Dick". John quickly became a refrigerator mechanic- studying wiring diagrams, checking fuses and through the process of elimination, found the problem. Heading into the Labor Day weekend without a refrigerator wasn’t a problem that we really wanted to deal with!

Our State Fair is a great State Fair!

After 2 weeks of rural Wisconsin, we were dire need of a city fix. We had a great campsite just outside St Paul (right by 3M headquarters). We made it to the campsite in time to clean up and head out to meet Jack and his wife, Walker. We had an absolutely hysterical time. Jack and Walker are the perfect complement to each other. They had us in stitches talking about being Southerners (Charleston) living in Minneapolis. The time flew by at lunch and we had to get Walker back for a nap (but not until she had two scoops of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream). Jack took us for a quick tour of Macalester College and we got to see his office- a bit of a tribute to Mongolia.

We took a tour of Minneapolis/St Paul. It was interesting to see the city from a tourist perspective- and re-visit both downtowns, Minnehaha Falls and the Chain of Lakes. After our intro tour, we did our own driving tours of both cities – enjoying the sites and the ethnic restaurants. We had Korean, Afghani, Ethiopian and Southern Indian. We ate and ate and ate. We also toured Stillwater, my old stomping grounds in WBL, the U of M and Dinkytown, Old St Anthony.

I think that the highlight had to be the Minnesota State Fair. After much protesting, John finally relented and we spent the day at the fair- eating and watching huge people eating – constantly. Every food you could imagine was offered- on a stick: walleye, pork chops, cheese, meatballs, catfish, pickles, and key lime pie. If something on a stick wasn’t enough, you could get a huge bucket filled with French fries or chocolate chip cookies. We grabbed a beer and watched the people- eating and the X-er’s taking rides like the “Free Fall”.

Viola Lake

More rural Wisconsin time- we headed for Mom’s house on Viola Lake. We had limited electrical power, but a great lake view out of our front window. We had happy hour on the pontoon with Mom and ED and Denny and Sharon. It was a complete tour of the lake complete with commentary.

We drove to Duluth for the afternoon and explored the new developments by Lake Superior, Park Point and saw my childhood house. We topped off our evening with a “Fish Boil” at the local lodge. Evidently a Scandinavian tradition, it was a process of boiling water in a huge kettle, adding onions and potatoes and finally adding the fish. The finale was a dousing with kerosene and a huge whoosh of flames as it was lit. Then, it was time for a taste test. The fish was actually fairly good- quite bony and not much in the spice department, but worth a one-time try. We had dinner at the “Sip n Suds” – taking advantage of the $1.00 hamburger night. Since Mom was in the middle of her “porch project”, John signed me up for a painting day. Mom and I attacked the trim priming and painting. It took us all day, but it looked great at the end.

Eccentric Wisconsin

On the road again. We headed off from Indiana, leaving the land of motorhomes, to southwestern Wisconsin. Jane’s nephew, George, and his wife just opened a campground on the bluff of the Mississippi River just outside Cassville. The campsite was still pretty rough; they just opened on Memorial Day this year. With a bit of landscaping and some leveling, it should be a good site. His real business was the tavern/restaurant- filled with locals every night. They made a great cheese burger and it was a pleasure not to have to cook dinner every night.

We spent the first day on the bike- the roads in this corner of Wisconsin were heaven made for motorcycling. The terrain was unaffected by the glaciers that flattened the rest of the Midwest and the pavement is baby-butt smooth. We drove into Dickeyville and saw Holy Ghost Park. The park was created by Father Mathias Wernerus in the 1920’s from material collected from all over the world. It was filled with altars and shrines made of concrete encrusted with glass, pottery shards and fossils – with commands like “Faith, Peace, Chastity, Mildness, Long Suffering, Fortitude. We drove by the world’s largest “M”. It was the work of students from the Wisconsin Mining School in the late 1930’s.

Wisconsin may be the capital of Eccentric America. Nothing, however, comes close to “The House on the Rock. It was built by an eccentric, wannabee architect back in the 1940's. It is perched on the pinnacle of a huge rock. He built the original studio by carrying stones and mortar up to the site in a basket strapped to his back. Eventually, he built a ramp through the treetops to make the site more accessible. He built a 14 room "hump-a-rama" house- low ceilings, dim lighting, carpeted surfaces instead of furniture. He built the "Infinity Room"- a 218 foot, glass walled, cantilevered room with 3000 windows that juts out over the valley - fifteen stories straight down. Over time, he kept adding on to the house- expanding to include rooms for his collections- doll houses, suits of armor, a one million piece miniature circus, giant pipe organs. He even has a carousel with 240 animals and room filled with the old European mechanical orchestras.

While not much could come close to that bizarre site- we visited the St John’s Mine- which must hold the title of “worst place to work”. It was an old lead mine and we got to see the original mine and imagine life for these Welch miners…picking for lead veins in tiny caves and hand-carrying out the heavy metal in buckets.

We spent an afternoon in Dubuque-saw the old Victorian homes overlooking the Mississippi and the horrifying casino on the river. George introduced us to his friends who own a custom bike shop. They do a spectacular job of both building and converting bikes. John got to re-connect with his old buddy, Horton. He met us for lunch and joined us for another highlight- the AMA Amateur Hill Climbing Championship. What a show! 500 feet at an amazing incline- and quite a few of the bikers made it up the hill. After a few hours at the Hill Climb, Horton brought his potato gun back to the campgrounds and shot a few potatoes into the corn fields.

Billboard: “You drink, you drive; You crash, you die; your brother-in-law gets your bike …Bummer”

We become the "Guests from Hell"

It was back to Decatur and “From Trees to These” to get our cabinetry installed. We arrived in Decatur in a huge thunderstorm (we were both checking the skies for tornadoes) so we decided to stop at the factory parking lot for the night. The following two days Greg and his guys installed our new cabinet. We took care of other coach related stuff (getting grout cleaner, a touch up kit from the factory) and, at last, a chance to see the American Coach factory.

After a stop in Fort Wayne for some maintenance work at Cummins, we headed to “Charvat Country Club” and spent a few days with Gerry and Sandy. We got to see the progress on their new home and also got to see the “Pickle factory” in St Joe. It was actually quite interesting to see how they process pickles and relish.

We turned out to be the “guests from hell”. Our arrival was marked by a bit of an overshot on the driveway and we knocked out part of their stone wall. John put the stones back in and it looked good as new. With all the recent rain, Sandy was encouraging us to park on the driveway, but Gerry wanted us to have a good view of the creek so he backed us up on the grass. Several nights of torrential rains later, we decided to get everything ready to go while Gerry and Sandy were in church on Sunday morning. Unbeknownst to us, the grassy area we were parked on had been a garden (translation- not every well packed down ground) and as we tried to pull Maby Dick forward, it just sank in the mud. Our hearts sank as Maby sank further and further in the mud. Gerry and Sandy got home to find us on the phone trying to find a towing service. Gerry got ahold of a friend who had pulled his motorhome out before and while we waited for him to arrive, John and Gerry tried their own method. Using 2 x 10’s and the jacks, they slowly inched Maby Dick out of the muck. It was literally inches at a time- jacking up the motorhome, carefully placing boards under the wheels, dropping the jacks and moving it ahead a board length at a time. Just as the tow truck pulled into the driveway, they got it on the driveway- very muddy, but on solid ground again. The guys and the lawn didn’t look very good, however. We said our goodbyes and headed just a few miles away to Elkhart.

After the exciting exit from Gerry’s, we parked for awhile in Elkhart to just relax and play catch-up. The campground was run by a wonderful Indian family (who pointed us to a few Indian restaurants) and it was nice to just “sit” for a bit. We took the time to see the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart. The museum was small, but filled with some of the original “motorhomes” and trailers. Then, we planned our daily motorhome tour. Within 15 miles of our campgrounds, there were most of the major motorhome manufacturers. We started with Thor- and the Mandalay. We had a cute little marketing manager to take us on our private tour of the plant. We were quite impressed with the plant and with the unit. Then, it was on to Georgie Boy and Damon. The Damon plant (a company still privately owned) was quite impressive- but there really weren’t any models that would suit us. Their new quad slide looked like it was built for a NASCAR driver and team- a huge couch and bizarre layout. Mid-week, we went to the Gulf-Stream plant, home to the Atrium, and a private tour at Tsunami. The real highlight of the factory tours was the Monaco Royale- a Prevost converter. At over $1M, their coaches were stunning- all custom made wood interiors- like the finest corporate boardrooms. To top off our week, we did a tour of Amish country- stopping in Shipshewana to see MennoHof. The tour included an explanation of the Anabaptist movement- the Amish, Mennonite and Hutterites.