St. Paul, MN FMCA Convention (Jul 12 - 17)

Sat July 12th—Today about 14 coaches caravanned from Red Wing to St. Paul.

We really got lucky and got parked right across the street from the MN State Fairgrounds where the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) Convention is being held. We arrived about 10:00 a.m. this morning. Our friends, the Mertz’ from Fargo, ND have been coming here to the MN State Fair for many years so they know their way around and a few good places to eat. We had Greek Gyros for lunch today at Dino’s restaurant. So good and filling! Tomorrow morning several of us are going to “Hell’s Kitchen” for breakfast. Don’t know if this is where the TV series got started or not but will find out. We have beautiful blue skies here with puffy white clouds, but it is very windy. We are supposed to have nice weather until Thursday with a high of 80 and low humidity. Good thing as the buildings at the Fairgrounds are not air conditioned!

Sun July 13th—Well the wind is with us again today and it’s beginning to get warmer! Turns out that Hell’s Kitchen in down town Minneapolis is not associated with the TV show of the same name. Good thing that the Mertz’ made reservations for the 6 of us. It was very busy. What a gourmet breakfast we had! I should have taken a picture of our dishes before we ate them! The waitresses wore their PJs to serve us and the hostess that seated us was named “Cyn” (sin). The Mertz’ ordered Toasted Sausage Bread for everyone to share—oh so good. It is a dense bread made with bison sausage, spices, currants, pecans and black coffee. I had Bison Benedict, which was a charred bison flank steak topped with two poached eggs and served with a tangerine-jalapeno hollandaise sauce on toast points. I thought it might be a little spicy with the jalapenos, but they just gave it a nice flavor. Chuck had a similar Eggs Benedict except his had sausage.

Here we are entering Hell’s Kitchen

Waitress in PJs and Group

This is the side of the building by the parking lot. Neat, huh!

We spent a few hours at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. It is huge! Having the amusement park in the center of the Mall was unusual and here are a few pictures of it.

Roller Coaster Ride in the Middle of the Mall of America

This evening, we went out to dinner at DeGidio’s Italian Restaurant with our Eastern Gourmands Chapter that we had recently . The Campbels’ went with us as our guests. I think there were about 46 people in attendance! We had a great buffet including desert for $8.00 each!

Mon July 14th—Today we attended several seminars. The one I got the most out of was given by Geeks on Tour www.geeksontour.com entitled “Every RVer Needs a Blog”. Now if I could just find more time to take advantage of the things that I learned! I ran into two Crystal Lake friends there too—Nan Cooper and Carol Shafer. Earlier in the day, we sat with Bob Shafer and Rita Durand (Crystal Lake folks) for a seminar about High Speed Internet for RVers given by the same couple. This is the first FMCA Convention that they have attended. This afternoon they opened up the coach displays so that we could walk thru all of the new coaches. We only went into the 3 Discovery coaches that they had there as we kept running into old friends who used to own Discoveries!

Tue July 15th—Today we went on bus trip to Stillwater, MN to see the old Victorian homes there and to learn about the old logging town. We took a paddlewheel boat (replica) trip down the St. Croix River where we had a buffet lunch. It was a VERY hot day and we were grateful for the air conditioning on the bus and boat. We walked the town for a short while going in and out of air conditioned shops and stopped at Lily’s for a milk shake.

Restored Victorian House in Stillwater, MN

Replica Steamboat like the one that we took down the St. Croix River

Wed July 16th—Today we spent roaming thru the vendor booths looking at the Palaster chairs, satellite dishes for RVs, CAT engine display for a few and checking out all of the new coaches. This evening we went to hear the entertainment--Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They are a band that formed in the late 60's and one of their hits was "Bojangles".

So much to do and so little time!

Red Wing, MN Discovery Rally (July 8 - 11)

We are here at the Hay Creek Valley Campground in Red Wing, MN for a Discovery rally hosted by Vie and Chuck Brock.

Colorful Campground Roosters

Guess who thought he was on Candid Camera when he pulled into a gas station and tried to fill up the Vue in Red Wing and the pump wouldn't work. As he investigated why he wasn't getting any gas, he found out that the hose wasn't connected to the gas pump!! He quickly cancelled that credit card buy!

We experienced Tornado Warnings!!! a couple of times while we were camped in Red Wing. We had high winds, heavy rain and HAIL! One of the ladies in our club, Ev, is a trained tornado spotter so we looked to her for guidance in spotting a wall cloud till it got too dark to see. We did get a couple of indentations on the coach and on the Vue from the hail, but only one that is really noticeable! Others got A/C coil damage.

Ominous Sky!

Perkin's Restaurant

We had dinner at Perkin's one evening and enjoyed the terraced gardens along the hill behind the restaurant. The wind even cooperated so I could capture this shot below.

Red Wing Shoe Factory Tour

The Red Wing Shoe Company celebrated 100 yrs of operation in 2005. We really enjoyed the tour thru the factory and got to walk past the workers cutting, sewing, etc.

Cutting the Leather for Boots

Here's our very informative tour guide explaining how they cut the leather. She just retired after 30+ yrs of working there.

Red Wing Pottery Tour

Here again, this was a very interesting tour of how their pottery is made and we even got to see the Lead Potter making bean pots. Their pottery has a red wing on it.

Lead Potter Making a Bean Pot

Chickadee Cottage Cafe, Lake City

What a great place to have a gourmet lunch and a glass of wine! I even left with a loaf of banana and apricot bread to have for breakfast. If you are ever in the Red Wing, MN part of the country, I'd highly recommend driving over to Lake City and stopping here for lunch!!

Jim and Chuck Heading in for Lunch

The Historic Anderson House, Wabasha

After lunch in Lake City, Jim & Lois and Chuck & I drove over to Wabasha to tour the town. Plans were to have dinner here at the Anderson House, but with more storms expected for this evening, they decided to cancel it so that we would be at our motor homes when the storm came thru. We walked thru the House and saw the rooms that were for rent and also saw the room housing the cats that you could pick from to spend the night with you. A true cat house!

Anderson House Built in 1856

Pick Your Cat!

National Eagle Center, Wabasha

What a great place to see an eagle up close. We got there just in time to sit in on a very informative presentation and feeding of an eagle. After his presentation, the handler had children come up front and get their picture taken with the eagle behind them. Here's one of them:

Wind Whisper West, Wabasha--Here are some pictures of some of the beautiful used kimonos that they had for sale to be used as $600+ wall art:

New Beers for Us

We tried these two, new for us, beers while we were in Red Wing. Both were very good, especially the Honey Weiss!

Redwing and Mississippi River from Bluff Overlooking Town

Walnut Ridge Farm, Woodstock, IL Discovery Rally (July 5 - 7)

Today we left Warren, IN with the Campbells and traveled about 250 west to Woodstock, IL. Our friends, Bob and LaVerne Foerster hosted this Discovery rally on their farm. One evening a friend of theirs came by and went up in his parasail plane and took pictures of the farm with all of our coaches in the old feed lot. At one time the Foersters had milk cows there on their farm. Now it makes a nice place for parking Discovery Motorhomes!

Getting Ready to Fly!

Here he is high up in the air!

Overhead Shot of Coaches

Wally, Lois, Jim, Harry and Linda contemplating what to eat for dinner

The ladies went shopping one day and had lunch at a Tea House. We shared yummy tea sandwiches and different types of tea. I wished I'd had my camera to take a picture of the beautiful sandwiches, but I needed my hands free to be able to SHOP! This was a new experience for me.

All 24 of us went to Joey T’s Italian Restaurant on the Fox River for dinner one evening. What a great meal—we chose either Chicken Parmesan or Chicken Marcela and we had Spumoni ice cream for dessert.

Wally, Bob & LaVerne Foerster and Harry & Mary Condrey waiting for dinner at Joey T's

Rally Group on the bridge over the Fox River after dinner.

One morning, LaVerne took some of us to see the Old Woodstock Opera House where we got an in depth tour including backstage. Woodstock is where the movie “Ground Hog Day” was filmed and the bell tower of this Opera House was featured in the movie.

Woodstock Opera House

After this rally was over, most of us headed to Red Wing, MN for the next Discovery rally. This was a long days drive--but we got there in time for 5:00 Happy Hour!

Campbells - Warren, IN (July 1 - 4)

We spent the 4th of July holiday with our friends, Jim and Lois Campbell in their home town of Warren, IN. We had a nice camping spot (water & electric) behind the “Big” House at the Heritage Point Health Care Facility in the employees’ parking lot, which was very close to Jim & Lois’s house in the Dogwood Glen Villas http://www.ummh.org/. They drove us around Huntington County where they both grew up and showed us their old stomping grounds. It was fun reliving some of their memories of their early years! We had our fill of huge pork tenderloin sandwiches and really enjoyed small town America festivities—great fireworks in the park, antique tractor show with homemade ice cream and blackberry pie and a parade on the 4th.

Jim & Chuck standing by a 1950 John Deere B tractor like the one Chuck used to drive on the farm where he grew up.

Rumely Oil Pull Tractor

Old John Deere 1-horse power stationary engine used to make homemade ice cream

Here are some pictures that we took of the parade:

NOTE: While here in Indiana, I learned a new saying: The corn crops should be “knee high by the 4th of July”, and it was.

4 - Eastern Gourmands VA Wineries Rally (Cont.)

The last day of the rally found us gathering for coffee and pastries about 9:00 a.m. and talking about all of the wineries and restaurants that we had visited the previous days. We kind of agreed that it was too many wineries to visit in 3 days time, that visiting just 2 wineries a day would have been more enjoyable and just one meal out each day (lunch or dinner) would have been good too.

Did you know that there are 111 wineries/vineyards in Virginia? And we've only visited 8 of them. I'm sure future Gourmand rallies will take us to more of them!

3 - Eastern Gourmands VA Wineries Rally (Cont.)

Today was the 3rd full day of the Eastern Gourmands VA Wineries Rally and we visited 3 wineries, had a picnic lunch at the King Family Vineyard and ate dinner at an Italian restaurant--another very busy eating and drinking day!

Afton Mountain Vineyards, Afton http://www.aftonmountainvineyards.com/

Wine Tasting at Afton Vineyards

King Family Vineyards, Crozet www.kingfamilyvineyards.com/


Here is a member of the King Family explaining about making the different wines.

We shared a picnic lunch with Larry and Mem Halstead and this was our view of the mountians at the King Family Winery.

White Hall Vineyards, White Hall http://www.whitehallvineyards.com/

The manager at White Hall gave us a very interesting tour of the vineyards and the winery, explaining about the different vines, the de-stemming machine, and aging red wine in oak barrels. We left there with a bottle of 2006 Sugar Ridge White and a bottle of 2006 Gewurztraminer (strong lemon aromas precede bouquets of roses and orange blossoms with a powerful finish of spicy cloves).

This year's crop of White Hall grapes ripening on the vine.

D'Ambolas (Italian Restaurant), Afton www.dambolas.com/




Chuck had veal parisagn and I had shrimp scampi. Chuck's was good, but mine lacked garlic and was very bland. Don't know if I'd go here again. The service was extremely slow and they knew we were coming!

2 - Eastern Gourmands VA Wineries Rally (Cont.)

Today was the second full day of the Eastern Gourmands VA Wineries Rally and about 22 of us visited 3 wineries and ate at two very nice restaurants--a very busy eating and drinking day!

Burnley Vineyards, Barboursville, VA http://www.burnleywines.com/

Burnley Vineyards is one of the oldest Vineyards in the Monticello Viticultural Area. They have 31 acres of vineyards - Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Orange Muscat, Muscat Blanc, Chambourcin, Vidal and Norton. Burnley Vineyards is a family operation. Lee Reeder, pictured below, is the winemaker. This winery experience was by far the most enjoyable as far as information and all of the time that Lee spent with us answering questions about wine making.

Lee serving his wines

Cooper - He even has his own wine "Dog Gone Red" and we bought 2 bottles! Cooper's wine is made from Chambourcin and Norton grapes. Norton grapes were developed in Richmond, VA around 1820 and was the main grape in Early Virginia wines. It is a semi-dry red wine, created especially for someone just starting to enjoy red wine. It is fruity and soft, with a hint of sweetness--just like Cooper.

Pomme (French Restaurant), Gordonsville, VA http://pommeparties.com/index.html

The Gourmands' had lunch at Pomme and I highly recommend it. I had an asparagus omelet, yummy.

Horton Cellars Winery, Gordonsville, VA www.hvwine.com/

These were the red wines that we got to taste--but just a sip!

Barboursville Vineyard, Barboursville, VA http://www.barboursvillewine.net/








Three Notch'd Grill, Crozet, VA www.threenotchedgrill.com/

Now this restaurant is MORE than a grill and tops my list of places to go back to for more! I had sea scallops!