Ice Cream

We got to sample some homemade ice cream being churned by this one cylinder engine. Kenny was amazed by the engine so he just watched it for nearly 40 minutes as we shopped through the flea market. This flea market is the largest I have ever seen. They also have an auction house on site with several auctioneers calling in the same building. Beautiful antiques being auctioned. The flea market had to have over 1000 booths. We couldn't see it all in one visit. We will have to go back.

Farming the Amish Way

As we were traveling we saw this three teamed horse pulling a hay mower.

Amish Buggies

The Amish don't particularly like to be photo graphed so we took pictures of the buggies in their parking spaces at the flea market in Shipshewana and there was a place giving buggy rides to tourists that I took as they were passing by.

Visiting Amish

While at the RV rally we enjoyed a home cooked Amish meal, and enjoyed seeing the Amish homes and gardens. We sampled some of the baked goods and I even picked up a cookbook with recipes to try. Dinner was like thanksgiving. They sent down large bowls of mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, fried chicken, a meatloaf with a gravy, coleslaw and three kinds of pies. With the bread they served a peanut butter/marshmallow fluff topping or apple butter. All was wonderful. You can see we were well satisfied. They served about 70 of us in all.

Bea on Vacation

After doing some of our obedience training, I was interested to know if Bea would actually settle down some while travelling. In March when we went to Rayne, LA Bea was a bea-st! She tried to attack dogs walking by and was basically on high alert the entire time. I have to report that she did pretty well. She wasn't completely off high alert, but the difference between our March trip and our July trip were remarkably improved. She really enjoys traveling and I hope we can do it with her for a long time.

Flying Pigs in Cincinnati

I visited the link on my blogpage (Roadside America) before we left on our trip to see if there were oddities that I might want to see while traveling. To my delight Cincinnati has an oddity that I was thrilled to hunt down.

Cincinnati has a park on the riverfront near the ball parks. We found our way to it and what to our wondering eyes should appear but a FLYING PIG! When someone tells you "when pigs fly" you can let them know that they really do in Cincinnati!

There were also some beautiful vistas as well near the river.

Creation Museum

I was excited to visit the Creation Museum again this year. I think we saw some aspects that we hadn't really had a lot of time for last year. I cut up some apples for lunch, but Kenny didn't think it would be funny if we ate them in their Garden of Eden that they have on site. I am glad that he knows better than to challenge God that way. We ate the apples outside their restaurant.

If you ever get a chance to go; it is well worth the trip. Here is a link to their website. It is a well organized museum sharing how science and faith do not have to be mutually exclusive and that the conclusions that we draw from the evidences of science depend in part on our worldview. A humanistic scientist will tend to draw humanistic conclusions based on the evidence they see. However Christians come to the evidence knowing certain things about the creation story and it is marvelous to see how God confirms his word over and over.... http://www.creationmuseum.org/

National Radio Telescope Observatory

Ever since I took my first astronomy course at the College of Charleston, I have been fascinated by how God shows his majesty in the vastness of space. I had heard about the National Radio Telescopes that were being constructed and how they can give a better picture of space than the optical telescopes. In the first picture is the largest telescope on the planet. We are looking at it from approximately 1/2 mile away.

The location in rural Green Bank, West Virginia was selected because of the limited interference of other electronic equipment. Car motors, microwaves, cameras, radio transmitters all interfere with these very sensitive telescopes that are mapping our universe with the radio waves emitted by the stars. We could not even take pictures of the close to ten telescopes they have there because of the interference of the cameras.

Kenny is standing next to one of the first radio telescopes built in the scientist's back yard and later relocated to the observatory. The white frame you see is all constructed of wood. Very impressive. You can get a sense for how large it is based on the pictures of the trailer next to it.

The people there were so hospitable. They let us camp the night in their parking lot. I didn't know my microwave would interfere with them so I hope we didn't bother them too much. It is just a beautiful location with so many new discoveries being made. If you are interested, there is a very good website that shares some of the ways they are using the telescoped and the discoveries they have made: http://www.gb.nrao.edu/gbt/

Vacation Underway

Well, this is a little delayed as we didn't have Internet access along the way for vacation, but Kenny decided that since he could not obtain the parts he needed to repair the axles before leaving that he would run them as is and monitor them along the way.

The manufacturer of the axles was located in Goshen, Indiana where we were headed. The manufacturer came to the fairgrounds where we were located and replaced the faulty parts. They also checked the other wheels and found that there was another that was also affected. They think that our issue was just a fluke (bad day for whoever installed them) as they have not had any issues like ours reported otherwise.

We did arrive safely and our issue is corrected I believe so we couldn't have had a better outcome.