Touring with Fleetwood "Mac": Part 2: Our Stay at Hotel Roger

Once we got to Indiana the highlight for us was spending time with family. My nephews Justis and Logan have grown out of the infant phase and are becoming their own little people with unique personalities. We did go with them to the Niles Apple Festival to watch them ride carnival rides, but you really have to hunt to find anything with apples there anymore.

Do you have Capital One? (Bored Viking at Apple Festival)

Thanks to Anita, (Rhonda's mother) she was able to wrangle tickets to the Top of the Hops Beer Festival, hosted at the Silverhawks baseball stadium. They had about 50 beers from near and far and we were suprisingly impressed with a few of the local breweries. The craft-brewing scene is picking up in Indiana. The venue was impressive as well, since it was right on the field. I downed a couple beers from the great view on the pitcher's mound. Our favorites were Dragon's Milk Stout from New Holland Brewing in Michigan, Third Coast Old Ale from Bells in Kalamzoo, MI and Chucky Double Imperial IPA from the Evil Czech Brewery in Culver, IN.
We also squeezed in a Southern Michigan pub crawl with my in-laws ... I didn't have to twist their arms too much. The tour included Bells in Kalamazoo, Founders in Grand Rapids and then, while mostly an ale house with only a beer or two of their own, we went to Hop Cat in Grand Rapids. With nearly 50 beers on tap and the classy dark old world pub feel, it was impressive. However, Bells was probably my favorite with a blend of good food, interesting beers and really nice facility that included and outside courtyard that I would love to go back to sometime.
We also decided to do a first annual Brats and Beer Fest at the Hotel Roger. The local liquor stores have a pretty good selection of craft brews and we discovered DC Meats and their dozen or so varieties of great brats.

Near Elkhart, we went for a bike ride on a converted rail to trail in Middlebury, IN. Since we packed our folding bikes in the trailer, rail to trail bike paths are my new favorite thing to look for each place we visit. Normally a bike ride through Northern Indiana farm country would seem like a boring study in the crop plants of the midwest states, but this one cuts through Amish country. While yes we got to see our share of grain crops, we also got a glimpse into how the Amish culture lives today, from an Amish schoolhouse, to a farmer using an old world combine pulled by draft horses to cut down his corn fields, to a farm raising Belgian Horses and a field with some noisy Sandhill Cranes.
We also got to see more of the amazing Sandhill Cranes, which can have a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet on a nearby hike at Boot Lake Nature Preserve. These huge birds are just passing through, but they stopped to congregate and rest and there were hundreds in this small lake.

Years ago, when I was probably about 6 or 7, we used to live in Northern Illinois in a little town called Harvard, IL. While we were back in Indiana we were visiting friends in Chicago and decided to see if we could find our old home. As we drove by very slowly I was suprised to see that the old gas station built in 1918 that we used as a vegetable market was still there! While we were looking a man that was trimming trees nearby came over and I explained that I used to live there. What happened next really suprised me ... he said "Do you know Duane? I bought the place from him." (Duane is my father). After 35 years, Frank Butts, the person we sold the place to still owns it! We went up to the house and took some pictures. The original house we had lived in had burnt down in 1991 and he built another with a similar configuration on the same spot. It was weird to drive around the neighborhood and recognize places from years ago.