MPH Travels: Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Army

Caesar’s Creek Lake – 4/06/10
A few days ago, Gary and I went over to get his boat from where it’s garaged at Norma’s brother’s place. It’s the same boat that my Uncle Carl used to own. It’s an 18-foot cruiser with an inboard Mercruiser engine. Very nice. After Carl passed away, Edna gave it to Gary and he bought a trailer for it and has had it mechanically overhauled this winter. For the last few days, he and I have been pottering around, cleaning it up and fixing up a few minor things.
This morning Gary, Pia and I hitched the trailer up behind his SUV and headed up to Caesar’s Creek Lake. Ohio being inland, of course, there is no going to the beach, so you go to the lake instead. This lake is quite large. Gary backed down the ramp and I backed the boat off the trailer. It started okay and ran without a hitch all day. The sky was blue and the day was hot. We toured around the lakes and interconnecting waterways, and ended up dropping the anchor in a small cove and jumping overboard for a swim. (Well, Gary and I did anyway. Pia was possibly smarter).
At the end of the day, we recovered the boat the same way we launched it: Smoothly. Overall it was a great day, but we got a bit sunburned.

To Infinity and Beyond – 5/06/10
Today, Pia and I went to the US Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, just outside Dayton again. We had spent a day here a few days ago, and decided to return to see the rest of it.
The other day we had seen the collections from the early days of flight, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Today we saw the collections from the Cold War, Space, the ICBMs, the Experimental Aircraft and the Presidential planes.
We got to see nine former Presidential planes and go aboard, and look around inside four former Air Force Ones, Ike’s, Truman’s, FDR’s and LBJ’s. That was really interesting.
My favourites were probably the Experimental Aircraft. They were all the goofy and awesome USAF Experimentals from the 1950s, 60’s and 70’s. They had the Bell X-1B (successor to the X-1, which was the first plane to break the sound barrier), X-3 Stiletto, various parasite fighters, lifting body designs and VTOL designs. There was an F-104, another X-15 and even an XB-38. There were some very rare and valuable birds there. It was awesome.
The heavens opened but as we were inside most of the day, it made little difference to us.

Ohio to Indiana and back – 6/06/10
We awoke to the news that the on-again/ off-again threatening weather of the last week had finally resulted in some tornadoes. They struck well north of here and didn’t affect our plans.
Today Pia, Edna and I drove westward to Connersville, Indiana (hometown of Dave Letterman) to visit my cousin Molly and her husband John. We borrowed Norma’s Chrysler van as ours only has two seats. It was about an hour and a half’s drive along the old state highways through all these little farming towns. It was really nice.
The visit with Molly and John was really great. I hadn’t seen Molly since my 1993 visit and hadn’t seen John since the 1984 visit. Edna hadn’t seen them for a few years either and Pia met them for the first time today. John looked well and although I’d heard that Molly was having trouble with her health, she looked well, too. We caught up and had a few laughs. The GFC has hit Connersville hard, but with the opening of the new Carbon Motors plant coming here soon, things may be looking up. (At this point, anybody interested in cars should look at the Carbon Motors website). All too soon, we had to leave, but, as we’ll be padding by Connersville again in a few days, we’ll stop in again if we can…We headed west another hour or so to the town of Shelbyville, where Edna’s other son, Bob lives with his wife, Becky and their two sons, Scott and Eric.I had briefly met them in 1993. It was great to see them and Edna stayed behind to visit for a couple days.
We had dinner at Frisch’s (hehe) and returned to Gary and Norma’s for the night.