Wednesday July 30th - Oshkosh Wisconsin

We arrived in Oshkosh around 12:30PM.

 The drive from Rich's is about 210 miles, but it passes Chicago. We never were completely stopped but traffic was slow until we cleared Chicago. Navigation has not been a problem, we have 3 GPS systems in the vehicle, although sometimes I have to decide which one to listen to...or June.

We checked in...there was a bit of a line and picked a spot for camp.

One thing we learned is that there are no sites...people bring tape or rope and four stakes to mark their territory.  We were lucky and got a great spot, with a much coveted tree.  I can even get WiFi albeit slow from our site.

One thing to add to the list for next time..bicycles...everyone but us has them and the place is so big people just leave them everywhere.

We spent the afternoon looking around....this place is huge.  We visited the EAA museum, it reminds me much of the Smithsonian on a smaller scale.  They focus more on home built and experimental craft for obvious reasons.

It is so big we decided to take the Harley around the grounds and got very hosed up, ended up back out on the highway due to all the one way traffic, but we eventually found our way back to camp.








We finished the evening watching the night airshow from a distance, but it was very cool. Five T6's in tight formation all lit up at night doing aerobatics is pretty gut wrenching to watch.  Then they come out with the fire works planes, how they don't get them selves on fire is a mystery. They end it with a pretty huge fireworks display.  The pictures did not come out, so I have nothing to show you.

Today we will spend the day on the display grounds, we did not enter this area yesterday, then the show starts at 2:30PM...looking forward to a good sun burn.

Monday 7/28 and Tuesday 7/29 - Day 1 and 2: A bit of a delayed start...but we are well on our way now.

After our annual BBQ Saturday, our plan was to clean up and pack on Sunday and leave 'oh dark hundred' on Monday.  We thought we might two-ship it with brother Rich to Illinois since we planned to boondock in his drive on Monday night.  Things were moving as planned until about 2PM on Sunday while packing I (Fred) suddenly saw bright light flashes followed by black spots and cobb webs in my right eye.  Initially I hoped it would just go away, it didn't....after some internet research, we pretty much figured it was a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD), which almost everyone gets as they get old and is not serious.  The issue was that the symptoms are the same as a retinal detachment, which is serious but the difference can only be determined by an ophthalmologist and it should be diagnosed within 24 hours. To make a long story short, the packing got put on hold and off to the ER we went, they did an ultra sound and said yep you need to see an ophthalmologist. Thank fully they got me an appointment first thing Monday AM. Good news it is PVD, I still have floaters and shadows but they assure me they will lesson with time.  Sorry for the long story, getting old sucks.  So net is we reset and finally got on the road about 1PM on Monday, when we left it was pouring rain, a good day to be stuck in the car.

We had a  uneventful drive. Our original plan was to drive into Canada around Buffalo but since we did not see any problems on I90, we stayed the course and drove until 2AM Tuesday when we parked in a truck stop near Toledo, crawled in the back and slept for 4 hours.  We arrived at Rich's about 12PM local (1PM ET), and had a nice BBQ with Rich, Chris and the kids. WE had barbecued ribs on the grill and even replaced a spindle on Rich's zero turn mower...and a few beers..very productive I think.

Tomorrow we plan to depart for Oshkosh in the morning, but not too early.

We are really going to do this!

After talking about going to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for years we are really going to do it and since we will be  so close we decided to extend the trip to visit Sturgis South Dakota. The Oshkosh attraction is the annual EAA (experimental aircraft association) AirVenture, the world's largest airshow. I am a (non flying) pilot, every pilot's dream is to fly into Oshkosh, since I don't fly anymore, I will have to settle for driving in, maybe I will even unload the Harley and ride in.  Sturgis is the home of one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the world, and since we own a Harley we just have to go.

Our itinerary includes lots of driving, roughly 4000 miles.  Some of our legs may be a bit optimistic, we are really not on hard schedule, so we will adjust as needed.  Our plan is to depart on Monday July 28th and be home by August 11th, since we both work on the 12th.

So in a few days we will load up and get on our way....