The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!!!!

Well, I'll start out with the bad.....Of course you can't always have perfect days, rving or not, so it caught up with us yesterday. Vern got a real workout driving to Dayton, Ohio where he wanted to see the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum. We had a horrific drive with construction, detours, accidents on the road, and one detour that nearly put us into a big ditch. By the time we got here (actually, the only place close to the museum that we could find) we were beat, and unbeknownst to us (here comes the ugly) we ended up in an r v park that sounded pretty good in the book, but we realized very quickly that we are the only non-residents in the park. Rvers know what that means!!!! To make matters worse, for two days our lights in the coach had been flickering, and they finally gave out on us around 9 PM. Vern called Monaco, and they said "Check the fuse". He did and it was fine, so then he told Vern to bypass the solenoid. We decided to wait till the AM, so we went to bed only to be rudely awakened by a train that I thought was coming right into the rv around 3 AM.!!!! In the morning Vern knew just what to do, and like magic, he electrified us again..ho ho. (Thank goodness for old Clem Webster, Vern's old electrician employer when he was a teenager, and our dear friend Jack Hobbs, our rv mentor).

Now for the good part. Wright Patterson Air Force base in Dayton Ohio is huge, and they have an unbelievable air museum. I think almost every airplane that was ever built for the Air Force is there, including some from Germany, France, England, ect. Vern was so anxious to go, because it's about the only place he knows of that has the Airplanes he used to fly...F-106, F-102, T34, T-33, T-37. He found them and really enjoyed them all, including ones that friends had flown...Terry Wall's C-133...(Terry, notice how your airplane is hovering over Vern's like a stern father,) John Bollinger's B-47 and B-52, and so many others. Vern even found his Alaska squadron's (317th Fighter Squadron )mascot, "Iron Mike". Mike used to get stolen on a regular basis, and taken to strange places, like Viet Nam, Greenland, England , or wherever. Then it was up to the 317th pilots to find him again and bring him home. I see he has found a permanent home at last!!. (See Iron Mike's photo at top) We were there from 10 AM to 4 PM and it was great. After I figured how long we had been in there I told VB he owes me an Art Museum visit!!!!! In the entry there is a beautiful sculpture of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun.

The next good thing of the day was a visit to The Cracker Barrel Restaurant..what a treat!! It's always something to look forward to since California doesn't have any. Fortunately, we'll remember the museum and forget the rv park(I hope!)

Mary