Family Time

We've been so busy with family events that I've fallen way behind on doing pictures and blogging. Here's some catch-up:

Gregg's brother Gary is a Shriner who rides in the Famous White Horse Mounted Patrol, a 90 year old institution of Sioux City, IA. A highlight of our time in IA is visiting the stables of these gorgeous horses.

That's El Dorado, one of the performing white horses nearing retirement, watching his buddies perform.






This is the branch of the Schindel family that is descended from Jacob Schindel - most of us anyway, including in-laws. We were the biggest branch contingent of the 70+ person reunion that Gregg wrote about.

Many of the Schindel reunion participants attended the Melbourne United Methodist Church service and boosted their normal attendance of about 20 to over 50, nearly filling the beautiful little 150 year old church. It sits on the site of the now-defunct town of Melbourne, that gave up the ghost after the railroad and paved highway went through Hinton instead of Melbourne, about 2 miles from the Schindel Family farm.

One of the things Gregg and I love about going to church there is seeing our friend Margaret Spies, 100 years old last February, still self-supporting in her own home and sharp as a tack. Here she is with our one year old Great-granddaughter Jordie and Fiance-Granddaughter-in-Law Katie. 100 plus 1.

One of our reunion activities was a float down the Floyd River that runs through the Schindel farm. Lots of rain this year made for a very wide fast moving river, lots of fun and lots of mud!

Then we were off for Nebraska for more time with Gregg's kids and grand-kids. Found ourselves a beautiful new city park in Omaha (not really wanting to return to the one in which we were burglarized in May!).

Weather which had been oppressively hot and humid has cooperated so nicely for us. We had a little cooler spell for the 3 days of the Iowa reunion, then more hot, then cooler again for our Nebraska visits. Nice enough for eating outside again!

Hannah got to spend two overnights with us and get a lot of fishing time in. She fishes just like Gregg and me - fishing, not catching.

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Taylor modeled for me - the knit shoulder wraps that I have been making.

Now we are in Columbus, NE at Grandson Brandon's house and will stay here for some of the boys' football games.

Then... Wichita, Kansas next. Haven't been there yet this year!

Grandkid-Land

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Schindel Family Reunion

We held a Schindel family reunion in Plymouth County, Iowa over the weekend of August 13 - 15 with over seventy people attending from all over the country. All were descendants of my great-great grandfather, Peter Schindel, who was born in a small town just south of Frankfurt, Germany in 1828. Peter came to the U.S. on a small sailing ship in 1853 at the age of 25 and lived in New York and Illinois briefly before coming to Sioux City, Iowa to homestead in Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Iowa. My cousin, Susan Holtgrew, has traced the Schindel family history back to our ancestor, Theobald Schindel who was born in Bechtolsheim, Rheinnhessen, Hesse, Germany in 1670. We had an evening get together at the Longbranch in Hinton, Iowa on Friday evening, then a day-long picnic in the town park in Merrill, Iowa. We had ample opportunity to visit after everyone took a turn telling a little about themselves and why they had come to the reunion. The reunion was brought to a close on Sunday with a picnic at the Schindel Family farm near Merrill. Many attendees visited the Floyd Valley Cemetery near the now-defunct village of Melbourne where Peter Schindel as well as my great-grandfather Jacob Schindel, grandfather, Allen Schindel as well as my parents are buried. We had a great time meeting new relatives as well as reconnecting with others. I was proud that both son, Doug and daughter, Cindy as well as their entire families were able to attend. Great-granddaughter, Jordie Schindel, who is just sixteen months old was also in attendance with her parents Brandon and Katie.

Serendipity

So we were just driving along yesterday, about to relocate to Iowa. Then Gregg notices a sign for a Threshers Festival. We'd only been on the road about an hour but, heck, we have several days to get to Iowa from Minneapolis. So we pulled in and found a fun little weekend long festival with free camping on a shady, grassy lot. Gregg's been wanting to find one of these - a Threshing Bee or Thresheree. The old-time steam and gas engines demonstrate threshing, the separation of grain and chaff. Flea market, craft fair, cloggers, music, fair food, and more. Hundreds of tractors are here and there has been a 60-90 minute parade of them each afternoon.

When we first arrived we walked in, saw a sign for wagon rides and hopped on the wagon. We rode with them around the festival grounds right to the start of the parade - what luck we thought, perfect timing! Then the lady sitting in front of us struck up conversation because she wondered who we were. We told her we wanted to see the parade and then she informed us that we were IN the parade, riding on the quilting ladies' wagon that always starts their parade! We laughed and laughed and jumped off that wagon at our first opportunity...

Having a good time here.

Crazy route to Iowa

We did some rejiggering of our plans the last couple of weeks. I wanted to attend a cousin's Memorial service in Illinois at the farm where my Mom was born. So I took the Greyhound (fun experience...) to Chicago and joined my sister and niece there. We had a great couple of days and squeezed in attending the musical Billy Elliott (Wow!) downtown.

We had a great time with family remembering a very colorful aviator, 87 year old cousin, seeing his ashes spread over the farm where Mom was born and where he grew up.












Then, being near a big airport, I decided to fly to Phoenix for 3 days with my kids. I miss them! Andy and I even did an overnight in Prescott. Was so good to see them.

Meanwhile, Gregg finished out the week in Oshkosh and drove the motorhome to Minneapolis. I flew back there from Phoenix and we had a couple of days to see friends there. So that is how we find ourselves in Minnesota this weekend...still
headed toward the southwest.

That yellow boat is on Lake Minnetonka, a restored street car boat. The street car line used to continue over water to the island in the lake. Beautiful!

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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Pictured Rocks

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On our way home ...

It will take us another 2 months to get home, but we have now headed west again. Reached our furthest point north in Michigan.


Wow - big triangle from AZ to Key West to the U.P.

My niece Kelsey and her boyfriend Dan were visiting her Dad, George and step Mom, Linda. We all took an incredible sunset cruise along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Breathtaking. Local cuisine - pasty. (Rhymes with nasty, not hasty.) Meat pie with potatoes and veggies. Good!!! Marquette is a beautiful city on Lake Superior. That's a big ore loader - loads huge river barges with coal. Our front yard one day. Gusty winds, wicked rain and neighbors trying to hold their campsites together. See the neighbors under their table cover? Lucky for them, it didn't last long and they succeeded. What the storm looked like out our front window... Gregg found a new reading room in the RV... More pictures of our front yard on the shores of Gitchee Gumee, the incredible Lake Superior, largest fresh water lake in the WORLD..