Westward bound with a bit of a surprise

We left you in Buffalo where we had a great time and a lot of fun at a July 4th cookout at Joanne's parents' house and met and enjoyed some of her large family.  We tried to brave sitting outside but the record heat finally drove us inside to the AC.  

Jason took a couple of days off and took us to Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, about an hour away.  It is located in a beautiful area of farmland, wineries, pretty homes, and is a picturesque walkaround town with tons of shops, restaurants, and parks.  Jason had been there before and was somewhat familiar with the wineries.  Jan and I honestly didn't have a lot of hope for Canadian wine.  Well it turns out some of the wine produced here is world class, and we can assure you, delicious:-)  So after tasting quite a bit and having a nice lunch we all three tried to keep the Canadian economy going, all the while enjoying the favorable exchange rate.  The car was definitely heavier on its return to the USA.

The Konzelmann Estate Winery

Jason heading into Big Head Winery

And our favorite, Ravine Vineyard

Then after one more get together the night before we left, off we dashed to Indiana for our body shop appointment.  We stopped in a campground nearby, and had asked for a pull-through site for a 45' motorhome towing when we made our reservation as we would be leaving by 6am the next morning.  We check in and head for our site and when we pull in our truck in still in the road behind us!  Jan runs back to the office, and they say, oh, and give us another site, but the problem is we can't just drive around to it, so we have to unhook, move the truck to the new site and then back and fill the coach to get pointed in the right direction and then pull in and reconnect the truck.  Not a big deal overall, but it is disappointing that in what looked to be a nice campground only half full, that they can't get a simple request correct.  Anyway we spent an uneventful evening and got off right at 6 am for our appointment.

Now just to review we had an appointment to fix, for the third time, the top of our left front wheel well, where the tire hit it during a tight left turn on a slant.  We had found out, too late unfortunately that the manufacturer for some reason built the left wheel well opening 2" lower than the right, no wonder we were having a problem.  If we had realized that we would have done a corrective repair the first time.  Anyway, we had talked to the body shop on the phone and sent pictures, and they had given us an estimate that they informed us had to be confirmed when they actually saw it, which we understood.  It was in the ball park of what we wanted to spend so we made the appointment.  They were also going to cut the lip back inside the wheel well to help mitigate the problem.  Also I should mention when we were having the new air bags installed in Florida, I had Josam's increase the ride height 1/2" in the front which we were assured wouldn't hurt anything and it appeared that the 1/2" made an incredible difference on its own.  The body shop man came out, looked everything over, moved the coach to the work site, and then, Surprise, came out with tan estimate which was WAY higher than we had talked about.  Jan and I talked and decided, especially with preliminary plans for Alaska and its bad roads next summer, to put off the repair til another time.  There were no hard feelings, but I am reluctant to name the shop as I don't want to take a chance that anyone would think they did anything wrong.  It is a quality shop that I would readily go back to.  We did have them cut the lip out and that looks like it will help a great deal as well.

It's pretty small and actually doesn't show very much

Here is a shot of the lip.  They ended up cutting about 1 inch off and
tapered it around the side so it looks like factory

You can see the taper they cut into the lip

We had planned up to 3 days in Elkhart so all of a sudden we gained the time.  We went off to breakfast to give them time to cut and we could figure out what to do.  We had wanted to go up north through Michigan and the U.P. anyway to avoid going anywhere near Chicago so now we had time!  We decided what we really wanted to do was spend the extra time in Montana.  We had wanted to go up through Michigan and the U.P. anyway to avoid going near Chicago, and now we would be able to and arrange to stop near Pierz, MN to revisit an incredible meat market, Thielen Meats of Pierz.  We used to watch a Food Network show called The Heartland Table featuring Amy Thielen that we enjoyed and when traveling through this area a few years ago visited the market and were very impressed.

Our first stop was 180 miles to a very nice resort campground in Stanwood, MI, River Ridge. The next day we go over the Mackinac Bridge and right into a detour adding over 40 miles to our already long day due to a closed road.  

The Mackinac Bridge

Under construction

We did get all the way to the west edge of Michigan and spent the night in a quiet nice campground in Iron Mountain, MI, Summer Breeze.  Then yesterday with another long day we arrived in Onamia, MN at the Rum River campground where we will stay 2 nights to get to the meat market, then another day into ND, and into Montana.  When you make these dashes from one side of the country to the other you learn it is a long way:-)