Oshkosh EAA Airventure

The last week of July each year, the largest airshow in the world is held in Oshkosh, WI. The small airport there is the busiest in the world that week. A small city grows up around the airport with visitors totalling more than 500,000. More than 10,000 airplanes attend. Neighborhoods of tents and RV's of all kinds pop up within biking distance. They had had 7 inches of rain the week before resulting in muddy campgrounds so many, many of us were in satellite campgrounds in parking lots. We ended up really liking our abandoned KMart parking lot with 100+ neighbors. Met lots of fun people and enjoyed evening happy hours in our campgrounds. Watched a Chicago concert from the shade under the wing of a Ford Tri-motor plane that had been flown by Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. Found some small planes with folding wings that can be towed in a trailer behind a motorhome...hmmmm.
Click here if you would like to see what Oshkosh is like!

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Our yard

One thing we love about our wandering --- our yard keeps changing. And sometimes we get one JUST RIGHT. Loved this one in little Oconto, WI. Spotted it from the highway and pulled right in, stopped by noon. How lucky we are to be enjoying this flexibility...

We've been visiting friends in Michigan's U.P., Upper Penninsula. We've decided to call George our brother-in-law-twice-removed. He is the father of my nieces and nephew from Illinois. Have had fun with him and his wife Linda.

George and Linda's beautiful back yard on the Au Train River.

Linda preparing her kayak for a weekend long symposium in the same town we headed for next, Grand Marais, MI. We'll probably bump into her again this weekend. We're going to do a little kayaking here. Our AZ kayaking friends would love this place with hundreds of sea kayaks here for this big symposium.

Aren't these gorgeous??? No, we didn't buy them...

By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, by the shining big-sea water. We keep coming back to Lake Superior every year...so beautiful with its deep blue waters.

Our campground is right on the shore of Gitchee Gumee. This is our beach, our yard for now ...

Enjoying Wisconsin!

It's not ALL about getting the fresh squeaky cheese curds direct from cheese factories ... though that is a large part of our enjoying Wisconsin.



Take a look at the fabulous 70 mile bike ride we did...

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Good Old Midwest 4th of July

What a great way to spend the 4th of July - with my Mom's crazy Lang family in Bettendorf, IA - Quad Cities. THAT is a POOL party - almost everyone in it, most with water guns, so no one on shore stayed dry.

My Lang cousins - we are the "older generation" now. We had a GREAT time seeing everyone.

You never know who you'll see an RV park - how about an RV with a big red nose?

Gregg, Jeri, Kelsey and I visited Mom, Dad and brother Bob in the beautiful Rock Island Arsenal National Cemetery. (The other side of the headstone is engraved for Dad.)

I just love crossing the Mighty Mississippi River.

Doesn't northwest Illinois look a little like Tuscany, Italy??? Sure is pretty...

Good Old Potosi Beer - Wisconsin brewed.

This has been our campground for 2 nights- a Corps of Engineers park, Grant River Rec Area at Potosi. Right on the banks of the river, we can watch the barges and other river traffic go by. This was dusk last night.

A new First!!! (I love "firsts").

Fish Fly (or May Fly) hatch. We'd heard of them of course, being amateur fly-fishers. But now we've been IN one.

The camera does not adequately capture the enormity of this experience.

There have been clouds of them with the air sometimes absolutely full of the little critters. The grey area to the right of the tree is one.

They don't bite or even seem to leave any residue behind so we have rather enjoyed them.

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Taliesin

We are now back across the beautiful Mississippi in Iowa, in the small town of Decorah, in the most beautiful RV park we've yet seen with wide green lawns and bike trails leading for miles and miles around town.

The last thing we did in Wisconsin was a tour of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's personal home.
Very, very beautiful with tour guides who really know their business - fascinating. Pricey but well worth it and you see why they need the high price tags. It's a big job trying to preserve this place that was designed more for beauty than for structural soundness. The home is wrapped around the top of a hill from which the views are incredible. No glaciers came through this swath of SW Wisconsin and NE Iowa to level hills. The land rolls and rolls and the sun and rain create lush, lush landscapes.

Spring Green

Southwest Wisconsin -

Breathtakingly beautiful.
We are camped along the beautiful Wisconsin River.
REAL cheese curds, not those fake ones.
Fresh and squeaky.
Hot & humid - first time we've turned A/C on in SIX weeks, since June 24 in Southern MN.

The House on the Rock -

The strangest place you can ever imagine. Think Walt Disney, Michael Jackson, obsessive-compulsive collecting, strange, strange, strange...

These pictures are only a MINUTE sampling of the strangeness there.

I'll post more another day after my tour today of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin.

More EAA

Just another couple of pics to go with Gregg's post below about the EAA museum.......Gregg & his favorite, the Piper Cub and me and my favorite, the Flying Flea.

EAA AirVenture Museum

We just could not pass through Oshkosh, WI without visiting the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) AirVenture Museum and Pioneer Airport at Wittman Field. Oshkosh is home of the worlds largest aviation event, held each year for a week in late July. To give an idea of the scale of this show, it is attended by over 500,000 people and includes some 2,500 aircraft. If all were parked side by side, the flight line would be about 5.2 miles long! About 40,000 campers make the convention grounds their home for the week-long event at Camp Scholler, an integrated 700 acre campground. During the convention, Wittman Field becomes the worlds busiest aiport in terms of takeoffs and landings. Aerial events are scheduled each day at which time the airport is closed to traffic. The museum is open year around and is home to over 250 aircraft and five movie theaters featuring subjects of aviation interest. Pioneer airport which is a part of Wittman Field is a 1930's replica grass airfield and includes over 50 vintage aircraft. EAA members fly homebuilt, classic, antique, warbirds, ultralight, rotorcraft as well as "plain vanilla" conventional aircraft. EAA AirVenture is the place to be to find out what is happening in aviation.

Para-Sailing

Absolutely perfect day for para-sailing, great group of 5 that we went out with, Gregg loved it and Sally is really glad she did it once...

First, our new refrigerator....much better than the red cooler in the bathtub. We are happy campers now.









Next, some wonderful images from Door County, WI. What a place this is. We're finding fun things to do every day:
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Fish Boil - delicious.
He's adding what he calls "a pinch of salt".

Then he adds 2 cups of fuel oil to the fire to create a blaze that makes the fish stew boil over and spill its fat on the ground. The resulting fresh Lake Michigan whitefish is wonderful!
See the boilover here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EHGyzuQZGU

A rule of mine...

Always Stop at

Lemonade Stands!!

Support the entrepreneurial, capitalistic dreams of the young! Notice the Free Ice.

(I found these 2 girls to be an interesting study in opposites - look closely at them...)

Cherry Fest -

Pennies are tossed into the sand for the little ones to find. Nice, nice beaches all around here.

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Today we go para-sailing, add more sitting in our lawn chairs along the harbor, more treasure hunting in the gift shops, maybe kayaking, then back home to the RV to pack up for another move tomorrow. Heading to SW Wisconsin to the Spring Green area to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin as well as doing some biking on a state trail.