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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Vacation 08 for the Gibson's

We had a great vacation but it's good to be home!!! We traveled about 4000 miles round trip. Dan's family had a family reunion up in PA and since it was going to be such a short weekend we decided to do some stuff before we got there.

We got a little bit of a late start on Friday and stopped for the night in Olathe, KS.

On Saturday we head up to Wisconsin Dells. We've been there before and it was lot of fun. We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge which we'd never stayed at before. We have one locally, but haven't been to it either!

The only bad thing was they had had a lot of heavy rains and in some places we saw water covering front yards still. One place we were near - Lake Delton, had a breach in the lake and all of the water drained out!

Wisconsin Dells is a very touristy place. One of it's big draws is the hotels with indoor and outdoor water parks. We didn't take the camera with us into the water park portion of the hotel so I don't have any pictures to show you. We did however go to a really fun place that we'd gone to the last time we were there. It's the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory Museum. If you ever get a chance to go, you should!

It can be a hair raising experience!



We kind of lost our heads at this place.




Does it look like I'm terrified - I am!!!!!!




We also went to a really cool place about an hour away. If you've ever seen those huge fiberglass statues or "Muffler Men" that Roadside America talks about, we found the place that makes them. It's called the F.A.S.T. Corp. and to most folks this would be boring, but it was a lot of fun; even the kids enjoyed it!




These were just a few of the molds. There were acres of them.





Next, on our journey was to Indiana. We stopped by one of the houses Dan lived in before coming to TX with his family. Then it was on to Auburn, IN. We forgot about the time change and missed getting to see one of the car museums there, but that was okay since it wasn't the main car museum we went there for. If you're into cars, and even it you're not, this is a really cool car museum. It's the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum. I couldn't tell you how many millions of dollars worth of cars are housed there!!! Here are some pictures of just a very few number of cars there are to see here.



What beauties!

Next we headed up to Niagara Falls, NY to stay for a couple of days before the reunion. The last time we saw the falls, we stayed on the Canadian side. It was amazing how much there was to do on the Canadian side, but nothing really on the American side. We talked to several people and they said it's been very sad to see so much closed up on the American side. It only cost us $.50 ea. to cross the border into Canada. Our daughter Mary and her dad took some really cool pictures. I just don't have enough room to post them all! The garbage barge you see in one of the pictures has been there since 1918. Dan said his grandfather remembers seeing it.



About to enter Canada!


Half of us are in the US and half in Canada! Dan is in both countries!


This is the garbage barge that his been here since 1918.


American Falls taken from the Canadian side.



Our last leg of the journey was to Dan's family reunion in PA. We stayed at a Salvation Army Retreat. Mainly older folks there, but it was nestled in 1400 acres of beauty! We saw deer, groundhogs and, the girls even saw a bald eagle (the camps mascot). It was good to see family that we hadn't seen in a long time. We spent one afternoon at a school where we met more of Dan's family. The only surviving sibling of Dan's grandfather was there and had just celebrated his 95th birthday! Go Mitch 95!




We didn't really stop for much on the way home. We were tired and ready to get back home to our pooches and fish (and you guys of course!!!!).

This was a good vacation but it's good to be back. I just need another vacation to catch up on all of the things I didn't get done while we were gone!

School will start in a few weeks and maybe I'll get a little bit more done that I need to, but probably not!

Enjoy!

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