Life after Adventureland ...after a paragraph, ok?

While I haven't made an entry in this blog for ...months, we've been alive and kickin' in Las Vegas lately, as well as a few other places in the southwestern part of the country prior to that.  Primarily we've stayed at 1000 Trails (1KT) as we have a membership there, but we've ventured to a couple of campgrounds / resorts that aren't 1KT.  Doesn't mean that we don't like the others, just that it's much cheaper to stay there than it is elsewhere.  And since Katie likes to swim and all the 1KT we've been to have a pool, it's one of her preferences.

The last entry we had was during the last few days at Adventureland.   This was an experience that we'll remember, but as far as working there again goes, we probably won't.  Not that working there didn't have it's perks and good times, it's just that we didn't enjoy the high temps and high humidity combinations, along with the possibility of tornadoes, and there were a few issues we had with the working conditions there, which added up to a "not as pleasurable as we'd hoped for" experience.  Doesn't mean that it'd be the same for others, especially the folks who've done this year after year after year, enjoying it very much.

Amana Colonies RV Park
early in the morning.

I'm trying to look smaller,
does this work?  It does, doesn't it?

A Winnebago Industries travel
trailer, one of the first!

We left there on August 29th to go to The Amana Colonies staying at the Amana Colonies RV Park located just a couple of miles from downtown Amana.  Spent a couple of days there taking tours and contributing to the economy.  This was a place that Katie had wanted to see ever since she heard that her parents were gonna go there on their motorhome trip years ago.  It was interesting to find out how the colony started out and changed over the years, and what it's finally become.  As the colonies had the original intent of being self sufficient, there were and still are lots of crafty places there.  On the tour of the colonies, we stopped at the Broom and Basket Shop in West Amana which happened to have the Iowa's largest solid walnut rocking chair, a monster of a chair which helped me out in my quest to feel smaller and not as large as I've become.  As we toured around the area, we also saw one of the first Winnebagos made.  If ya look at how Winnebago Industries has changed over the years, you'd be able to see that they originally started out making travel trailers, and this is one of them.  Eventually, they phased them out of production, but recently started making them again after acquiring a trailer manufacturing company.  Does this mean that they've come full circle?

Not really sure I wanna
go in there, Katie. 

Grand Wood's American
Gothic in sculpture in
downtown Dubuque.

C'mon Honey, catch me
if ya can!

We headed towards Fox Lake, Wisconsin on August 31st, but had to make a stop along the way at the set of the "if you build it, they will come" movie, Field of Dreams.  The farmhouse in the movie is there, along with the baseball diamond, just no movie stars.  We both got pictures of us like we were walking into the cornfield, but we stopped before we got we got into the corn because (as everyone knows...) everyone we saw in the movie who ventured into the cornfield disappeared.  And since we still had quite a bit of trip left, we just posed ourselves as if we were going into it.  So... no, we didn't disappear.  All in all, it was a nice side trip, gave us reason to watch the movie again and say, "we saw that ...and that" more than just a couple of times.   Later that day, we made our way to Dubuque, Iowa and spent the night in a Walmart parking lot after doing a little touring of the city.  During our touring, we found the 25' tall version of Grant Wood's American Gothic.  As Katie is an aspiring painter, she was excited to see this.  Had to stop in the middle of traffic to get a picture of it, but it worked.  We also found our way to the Julien Dubuque Monument which overlooks the Mississippi River a couple miles south of the city.

Julien Dubuque Monument,
Dubuque, Ia

Beginning of the Kiwanis Korn Karnival parade, 2011

One of several marching bands.

So, do we have to stay in this
crowded thing?  Can't I get out?

When we got to Fox Lake by going through Randolph, Wisconsin (among other places).  Along the road, there were lots of billboards promoting the Raldolph Kiwanis Korn Karnival, complete with a parade, which was to take place in Randolph shortly after we got to Katie's sister's house in Fox Lake.  It was somewhere around this point that we decided that we'd enjoy a parade as we hadn't seen one in years.  After settling in at Katie's sister's house (her name is Kristi), we found out that they planned to go to the big event also when the parade happened, and then go to the Kiwanis Korn Karnival for a free cob of corn!  So we went,  had a great time, and decided that going to small town celebrations was really a lot of fun.  This was the first of several small town celebrations we were able to take in.  Having not been to a small town parade made me realize that there are things in a small town parade that aren't in a big city parade.  Things like the local barbershop chorus, good looking extinct cars, and Mr. Pig!  But, it seems as though the Kiwanis in Randolph have disbanded so can't say if the Korn Karnival will happen again.  

Where do they rehearse when
there isn't a parade?
Or do they rehearse?

That's right, this is a Studebaker,
 but what model is it?

Yes, it's Mr. Pig who works
at Piggy Wiggy!

In addition to the parade and corn feeding, we got to instruct Kristi and her family on the fine art of playing disc golf as there was a nifty 9 basket course only blocks from her house.  I'm thinking these pictures of yours truly and Katie are of us teeing of on the 2nd basket.  Of the seven days that we were there, I think we played four times, it was lots of fun!  (How many readers out there are disc golfers?  If you're not, you can get discs at fine stores such as Walmart, a large sporting goods store, a pro shop at a disc golf course if there's one there, or at fine online stores.)

Mrs. Renzo & Katie

Can't ya just taste em?

We then headed to Kenosha, Wisconsin just to go to Renzo's Pizzeria.  When we lived in Kenosha many years ago, Renzo's provided food for us several times a year, possibly as much as once a month even!  Their pizza turnovers, Renzo fries  (they're really nothing more than bread sticks, ok?) and marinara sauce are very, VERY good.  For anyone who would like this kind of diet, I encourage you to head to Kenosha for this good food.  But as you can see on the website, the open hours are limited; so check that before you go expecting Mrs. Renzo to serve ya!  After lunch, we did a little sightseeing in Kenosha to see how much it was the same as it was in 1993 when we left.  We were amazed to find that it actually had, indeed, changed considerably in the areas we looked at which was mainly the Lake Michigan waterfront area.  Kenosha Yacht Club was established in 1912, but we didn't see that much of it when we were in Kenosha even though we went down to the beach every now and then.  Now, it has a pretty good presence there, as does a lot of other stuff down there on the waterfront.  We wandered around there too long gawking at the different things before we left for Indiana.  Now if you know your geography well, you know that to get to Indiana, ya have to go through Illinois with the shortest route being through Chicago.  I won't go through the fun we had driving the moho during rush hour traffic on the various freeways, I'll let you read between the lines.  (Here's a hint: it wasn't fun, ok?)  

Ok, I think I've blogged enough for today.  Gonna grab a little rest from the keyboard and hopefully start up again tomorrow.  Thanks for all your patience waiting for this blog entry.