Living Our Dream

More Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh, PA - Events of Monday, Sept. 19 to Monday, Sept. 26, 2011

In the midst of all our doctor and dentist appointments, we found time for a little fun. The ladies went shopping at Kohl's and the Dress Barn, and Paul stopped and looked around in Lowe's and Home Depot twice. He also had time to squeeze in a few small projects, and we had a good bit family time with just the four of us.

We also went out to eat several times. After our doctor appointments on Monday, we took Paul's step mother to Bravo for lunch to celebrate her birthday. Bravo is an upscale Italian restaurant featuring a creative menu and fresh ingredients. Bravo has locations in 19 states with 6 restaurants in and around Pittsburgh. They have daily lunch specials for $8, sandwiches for $8 to $10, pizzas for $9 to $11, and lunches that are smaller portions of their dinners, and they range in price from $10 to $12. All the meals were delish!

J. Michael had the following Friday off work. After our appointments that day, we were starved, so the four of us went to a restaurant called Uncle Sam's for lunch. Uncle Sam's has 4 locations around Pittsburgh.

Uncle Sam's has a variety of subs that range in price from about $6 to $8 and a filet mignon sub for $11. The price for the sandwiches also includes fries for eat-in orders. Fries cost extra for take-out. The 12-inch sandwiches and the fries will easily feed two people unless you are very hungry.

Because of the great sandwiches and reasonable prices, Uncle Sam's is very popular for lunch. We arrived just at the start of the Friday lunch rush, and you can see the line to order beginning to form.

Uncle Sam's has mostly steak subs. We all had the Uncle Sam's Special, which is a cheese steak with extra meat, marinated peppers, mushrooms and grilled onions. The sandwiches and the fries were excellent!

On Sunday, we all went to dinner at Bahama Breeze. We like the tropical atmosphere and the Caribbean-inspired menu.

Dinners range in price from about $10 to $15. We had firecracker shrimp as an appetizer, Lora had almond encrusted salmon, Margery had almond encrusted talapia, J. Michael ordered chorizo sliders, while Paul had Jamaican chicken. The meals were all great.

One of the things we like about Bahama Breeze is some of their menu items are available as lighter portions where you get a slightly smaller meal (for example, one chicken breast instead of two). That allows you to save room for dessert. We shared a chocolate island, which has a brownie base topped with chocolate mousse, whipped cream and toasted almonds. The whole thing is served in a sea of delicious cream sauce with chocolate designs.

With all the eating out we did, it's hard to believe Lora and J. Michael started a new diet several months ago. They are on the Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise, which basically restricts carbs and sugars. Carbs and sugars provide the energy for your body, and most of us take in way more than we need. All those extra carbs and sugar your body doesn't burn are stored as fat, especially around one's middle. Lora and J. Michael have been limiting their carb and sugar intake for about three months, and they have both lost a substantial amount of weight.

The good thing about the Belly Fat Cure is it only limits carbs and sugar, so that means you can still eat get plenty to eat, and you can still eat out as long as you're careful about what you order. You can even splurge once in a while with a yummy dessert (like a chocolate island) if you are careful with your other meals that day.

Lora and J. Michael have been talking to us about their diet for some time now, and after seeing them in Berlin, OH a few weeks ago and seeing how successful they have been, we decided to give the Belly Fat Cure a try.

For the first 10 days or so, we had not even been sticking to the diet very religiously, only following its general guidelines. Even with all the eating out in Berlin, with cream-filled doughnuts and pumpkin whoopie pies, and with eating out several times while in Pittsburgh, we have already lost almost two pounds each in less than two weeks. We can already feel our clothes aren't as tight.

Belly Fat Cure is more than a diet - it's really a lifestyle change. Changing your eating habits to 15 grams of sugar and 6 servings of carbs/day will not only cause you to lose weight, but you will be able to keep the weight off. We have been avid nutritional label readers since we were both diagnosed with high cholesterol. Now we've added carbs and sugars to our research, let us tell you there is sugar in EVERYTHING! Check it out yourself. Considering Margery was a one Mountain Dew per day drinker for 46 grams of sugar, she quickly adapted to eliminating Dew (among other things) from her diet, but amazingly, we have found our craving for sugar is greatly diminished. Limiting carbs and sugars will be a lifelong effort. Time will tell if we can stick with it in the long run.

As our travels for the year wind down and with our start of the Belly Fat Cure, we are officially ending the 2011 Zeller Foodie Tour. That's not to say we won't eat out anymore. It will just be a little less frequent, but we still hope to have some great restaurants to tell you about.

On Monday, we finished up the last of our appointments. With 14 appointments between the two of us over 6 weekdays, it was a very busy week, but we've completed all of our annual check ups. We got good reports on all our visits and tests. Margery may need cataract surgery at some time in the not too distant future, but for now changes to her eye glass prescription will deal with it.  Cataracts are a common eye problem as we age. The eye doctor said it shouldn't be a big deal to have it done anywhere in the country as long as we do our research to find a good doctor.

On Tuesday, we finished packing up the motor home and said our last good-byes. We will be meandering south. We have already had several cool days and nights in Berlin, OH and in Pittsburgh, so the speed with which the weather cools off will affect the speed with which we head south. We'll have more info about where we stopped in our next post.

Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh, PA - Events of Friday, Sept. 16 to Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011

Last Friday, we arrived in our old home town of Pittsburgh where we are staying in the driveway of our daughter, Lora, and our "son," J. Michael. J. Michael graciously agreed to temporarily move their new travel trailer to another location so we can use their RV pad while we are in the area.

 

As we said in our last post, we are here for family visits and for our annual doctor and dentist appointments. We also mentioned we wouldn't have much of interest to report this week, but we just wanted to make a quick post at the half-way point to say all our medical appointments so far have gone well. But it hasn't been all doctor appointments - we have also been enjoying our visits with family, we'll be eating out a couple of times and we worked on a couple of small projects. Next week, we'll have a few more details about some of the things we did during our stay in Pittsburgh as well as news about our next destination.

More Berlin, OH

Berlin, OH - Events of Tuesday, Sept. 6 to Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 

After Lora and J. Michael left at the end of the Labor Day weekend, we hung around the motor home the rest of the day Monday and all day Tuesday. Both days were pretty dreary. On Tuesday, we did our cleaning, Paul rotated the tires on the Vue, and we watched the twice rain-delayed NASCAR race.

On Wednesday, even though it was dreary and cool again, we decided venture out and drive to the bakery at Der Dutchman and pick up some pumpkin whoopie pies for dessert that evening and some cream-filled doughnuts for breakfast the following day. Yum!

The cool, dreary weather continued on Thursday. It was conducive to sleeping in, but we needed to get up a little early so we could move to another site because the one we were on had been reserved for the weekend by someone else. Scenic Hills is very popular on weekends in September and October, and by the time we decided to stop there on our way to Pittsburgh, we weren't able to reserve the same site two weekends in a row. The photo below shows our new site. This one was a pull-through, but it was still on the lower level.

Moving such a short distance wasn't a big deal and didn't take very long, so afterward, we decided to drive about an hour to Camping World in Akron to pick up a few items we needed. On the way, we stopped at Winesburg Meats to buy some beef snack sticks, which are similar to Slim Jims. No trip to Berlin would be complete without a stop at Winesburg Meats, especially since this is the year of the Zeller Foodie Tour.

We stopped at Walmart on our way back to the motor home, and after we got back and put the groceries away, we decided to run back out to Der Dutchman in Walnut Creek for a late lunch at the salad bar.

We usually go to the flea market when we're in Berlin, but when Lora and J. Michael were with us the weekend before, we decided to stop at the Haiti Benefit Auction in Mt. Hope instead. There are two flea markets in the area, so we decided to visit both of them on Friday.

The Walnut Creek Amish Flea Market is relatively new, and is located a few miles east of Walnut Creek. A few years ago, the Holmes County Flea Market, which used to be in Walnut Creek and which used to be the only flea market around, decided to relocate closer to Berlin and convert the building they previously occupied to a conference center. When the Holmes County Flea Market relocated, the new Walnut Creek Amish Flea Market started up closer to Walnut Creek.

 

Walnut Creek Amish Flea Market had a vendor selling some very nice, solid-wood furniture. Margery especially liked the jewelry storage that slid out from the side of the mirror on the dresser.

Another vendor had table-top corn hole games. The vendor urged us to try our hand. Instead of throwing the dried corn-filled bag, there is a plastic finger you twang to fling the small bag. Paul tried numerous times, but couldn't quite hit the mark.

Margery, on the other hand, scored on only her second or third try.

From the Walnut Creek Amish Flea Market, we headed west to the Holmes County Flea Market.

Both flea markets have similar vendors, and the vendors sell mostly new, country-themed merchandise. As usual, we don't really need anything, but we like to look.

On Saturday, Paul decided he wanted to check out Keim Lumber located a few miles from Berlin in Charm, OH. Keim Lumber started out as a saw mill over 100 years ago. A little later, they added a planing mill to produce finished lumber. After the Depression, they expanded the business and added hardware and other building supplies. Today, Keim Lumber occupies almost 40 acres with a total 650,000 square feet of warehouse, office and showroom space under roof. Their current 120,000 square foot showroom opened in 2007.

In addition to the usual building supplies (framing lumber, hardware, plumbing and electrical supplies, roofing, etc.), they stock numerous types of fine hardwoods, including many exotic species. The large piece with the red grain is box elder, the piece in front of that is spalted maple, and the small piece to the left of the spalted maple is curly big leaf maple.

There is also some very professional-looking wood-working machinery.

The photo below shows only about half the corded hand tools. They filled two walls, so we couldn't get them all into one picture. There are almost as many cordless, battery-powered hand tools as well.

And just so the ladies don't feel left out, they had a set of tools with pink handles. Coordinating pink tool bags were also available.

Paul misses his wookworking shop, and every once in a while, he needs to stop into Lowe's or Home Depot just to get a tool and lumber "fix." For someone like that, Keim Lumber is a woodworker's paradise.

We couldn't have this be the year of the Zeller Foodie Tour and be in Berlin in September where there several farm markets and not get some fresh sweet corn. One day when we were out and about, we stopped at Miller Orchards and picked up several ears. It was delish!

We also stopped at Der Dutchman Bakery and bought some more pumpkin whoopie pies for dessert and cream-filled doughnuts for breakfast. On another day, we went back again for the breakfast buffet.

From Berlin, we will be heading to Pittsburgh. We both have numerous doctor appointments, dentist appointments and some routine tests scheduled, so we'll be running around quite a bit. There won't be much time for blog posts (there won't be anything very interesting anyway), so there may be a bit of a hiatus. After Pittsburgh, we'll be meandering southward, so stay tuned.

Berlin, OH

Berlin, OH - Events of Thursday, Sept. 1 to Monday, Sept. 5, 2011 

Berlin, OH is still one of our favorite places even after traveling all over the U.S. It is in the heart of Holmes County, which has the world's largest Amish population. There are lots of things to see and do, and lots of good food for the 2011 Zeller Foodie Tour. We also love to see the well-kept farms...

...and in summer, there are beautiful flowers planted almost everywhere.

Berlin is only a couple of hours from Pittsburgh, so it was easy to get to when we were still working, and it is also a good place so stop on our way to or from Pittsburgh now that we're full-timers. This time, we met our daughter, Lora, and our "son," J. Michael, in Berlin for the Labor Day weekend. Afterward, we'll be staying a while longer to just chill out a while before heading to Pittsburgh for a visit and for our annual doctor appointments.

We pulled into Scenic Hills on Thursday before Labor Day. The drive from Milford, MI was longer than usual at 4½ hours. We usually like to limit our travel to about 4 hours, and lately we have really been spoiled because we have only been traveling only one or two hours between stops. On top of the long drive, we hit some fairly heavy rain once we got to Ohio.

In Berlin, we always stay at Scenic Hills RV Park. Scenic Hills has a little over 100 full-hookup campsites with free Wi-fi. About half the sites have 30/50-amp electric, and half have 30 amps. There are both pull-throughs and back-ins at Scenic Hills. A few sites are a little close together; but for the most part, site spacing is OK for a private campground. Roads are semi-paved (tar and chips), and the pads are fresh gravel. Scenic Hills is for fully self-contained RVs only as they have no rest room/shower facilities.

The campground is on three levels. The sites on the middle level are all gravel, and the sites on the other two levels are grass. The photo below shows our site on the lower level.

The next photo shows a view of some of the other sites on the lower level.

We usually try to get a site on the lower level because there is a lumber mill next to the campground, and the equipment at the mill and the backup beepers of the fork lifts are noisy during the day. The lower level seems to be a little quieter. Fortunately, the mill doesn't operate in the evenings or on weekends. The good thing about having a lumber mill next door is they supply the campground with free fire wood in the form of short ends and sections with knots they cut out from the hardwood boards they produce.

Arriving on Thursday gave us time to relax and to make a quick trip to the Walmart on Friday before Lora and J. Michael arrived. When they arrived, there were hugs all around, and we got to meet their new boxer puppy, Fiona. Fiona is a little over three months old.

Fiona and her older brother, Gunnar (who is 2), get along really well. In fact, they play together all the time. A little over a week before, Fiona and Gunnar were playing, and Gunner ran into Fiona, knocked her down, then fell on top of her. They landed in such a way that Fiona fractured her back leg. It is just a small crack; but the first few days were a little painful, and it was hard for her to get used to the huge splint the vet put on her leg. She's learned how to maneuver with the splint, and now she's doing really well getting around.

The next photo gives you an idea of how well Gunnar and Fiona get along - they are sharing a peanut butter-filled bone. Even though Gunnar is much bigger and could easily take the bone away from Fiona, he was willing to let her gnaw on the other end.

After Lora and J. Michael got set up, we chatted a while, then headed to nearby Walnut Creek for dinner at Der Dutchman.

We've talked about Der Dutchman several times before. It is one of 5 restaurants in a chain, most of which are in or near Holmes County.

Lora and J. Michael both had broasted chicken, Margery had chicken pot pie, and Paul had a hot roast beef sandwich. We all got the salad bar, which has a great selection of salad items and side dishes like three-bean salad, potato salad, chicken salad, ham salad, and more.

 

In addition to individual entrées, there are several menu selections that are served all-you-can-eat family style. Most dinners range in price from about $8 to $12 with the family-style meals a little higher.

The next morning, we headed back to Der Dutchman for their breakfast buffet. It is one of the best breakfast buffets we know of. The buffet includes scrambled eggs with numerous toppings available like cheese, mushrooms, peppers, onions, etc. There are also pancakes, French toast fingers, bacon, breakfast sausage, smoked sausage, sausage gravy and biscuits, potatoes, fruit, pudding, pastries, and lots more. The breakfast buffet is $7.59. Regular breakfasts and a la carte items are also available.

After breakfast, we stopped just down the road from Der Dutchman at Walnut Creek Cheese for the girls to pick up some bulk spices, then we headed to R. W. Leather for J. Michael to look for a new belt. R. W. Leather is located on an Amish farm. The leather belts are made from harness leather, and they are very durable.

After J. Michael picked out his new belt, we made our way to nearby Mount Hope to the Haiti Benefit Auction. Mount Hope Auction has numerous auctions of livestock, produce, farm machinery, hay, etc. throughout the year. There are also several benefit auctions every year including the Annual Haiti Benefit Auction sponsored by area churches and held every Labor Day Weekend. All the auctions usually bring out the Amish in great numbers as you can see from all the buggies parked outside in the next photo.

The Haiti Benefit Auction features items donated by individuals and local businesses. In addition to the couple of quilts displayed up front, there were dozens of them that would be auctioned off later in the day displayed down the whole side of the tent.

This was the only auction we have ever been to where they paused the sale to sing a hymn and to pray for the noon meal. It was a hot, humid day, and it was really warm in the auction tent so we didn't stay long. We didn't plan to buy anything, and prices were high because bidders knew the proceeds were going to a good cause, so they didn't hesitate to bid the prices up. On our way out, we stopped in another building where there were dozens of utility trailers full of fire wood waiting to be sold.

From the auction, we headed back to the campground. We sat around the rest of the afternoon and watched the dogs play, chatted and read.

The next day was Sunday, and just about everything around Berlin was closed. It was also a rainy day, so we drove about half an hour to Wooster, OH to the Everything Rubbermaid Store, which sells just about everything Rubbermaid makes, including some of the heavy-duty, commercial items. We had a good time looking around, and Lora and J. Michael ended up buying a few household items they didn't know they needed until they saw them.

Unfortunately, our Sunday evening campfire got rained out. On Monday, we said "good-bye" to Lora and J. Michael. As we said earlier, we planned to be heading to Pittsburgh in another week and a half, so it wouldn't be long until we saw them again.

After Lora and J. Michael left, we watched the campground empty out. Our plan was to relax most of the rest of our time in Berlin, but we will undoubtedly venture out to see a few more things in the area before we leave. If nothing else, the Zeller Foodie Tour has a couple more stops to make, so stay tuned.

Henry Ford Museum

Milford, MI - Events of Tuesday, August 30, 2011

After our weekend visits with family and friends and our Monday tour of the GM Assembly Plant in Flint, we drove back to Dearborn on Tuesday to see the Henry Ford Museum. The village and the museum are located adjacent to one another and are part of what is used to be called the Edison Institute. Today, it is called The Henry Ford.

Henry Ford began the institute to preserve items of historical significance and to portray the Industrial Revolution. The museum started out with Henry Ford's personal collection, which he began accumulating as far back as 1906.

The entrance to the museum is designed to look like Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

The museum is divided into several sections - railroads, automobiles, Heroes of the Sky (airplanes), Made in America (power and manufacturing), Your Place in Time (artifacts of American life and pop culture), agriculture, Fully Furnished (American furniture back to 1670), and Liberty and Justice for All (America's quest for freedom - independence to civil rights). On top of all that, there is also a temporary exhibit on the Civil War.

We decided to make our way through the museum from right to left, mostly because the nearest rest room was to the right. We passed the display of presidential limousines that include one belonging to President Reagan, one with a plastic bubble top that was used by Truman and Eisenhower, and even a horse-drawn brougham belonging to Theodore Roosevelt. The one we thought most interesting was the 1961 Lincoln that Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.

In the railroad section, there are numerous trains on display including the behemoth 2-6-6-6 Allegheny locomotive. At 600 tons, these were some of the largest steam locomotives ever built. They were designed to haul long coal trains over the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia. The locomotives were so powerful they could pull coal trains over a mile long at speeds up to 60 mph.

Visitors can also climb into the cab and try the controls.

The Ford Museum has an excellent collection of old cars and trucks; but, unfortunately, the automobile exhibit is closed for renovation until sometime in December. However, they have relocated some of the cars to an area on the far side of the trains, so we got to see at about a dozen of them. The car in the foreground is a 1905 Ford Model B.

From the temporary automobile area, we went to Heroes of the Sky. One of the planes on display is a replica of the Wright Flier.

Other planes range from 1909 to 1939. The Ford Motor Company had a division that built airplanes from 1925 to 1932. One of their best known planes is the Ford Trimotor. The one on display at the museum was used by Admiral Byrd in the first-ever flyover of the South Pole.

Ford got out of the airplane business in 1932 because they lost $5.5 million during the 7-year period they built planes, and they never turned a profit.

Heroes of the Sky also has test flight area where visitors can make and test-fly paper airplanes. There are instructions for folding...

...and an area for testing. Paul didn't hit the target, but he did have one flight that almost made it to the end.

The next area of the museum we came to was called Made in America. Here, there are exhibits of some of the machines from the late 1700s through the early 1900s that helped turn America into a manufacturing superpower. There were lots of generators, but one that caught Paul's eye was this water turbine-powered generator. The generator is to the left, and the water-powered turbine that drove it is behind.

To illustrate how much work it is to generate electrical power, they have a hand-cranked generator. The faster you turn the crank, the more lightbulbs light up. We both got up to 4 or 5 bulbs lit for short periods - only about 400 watts.

The exhibit also featured many steam engines including the one shown below that is 30-feet tall. It used to drive machinery that was used to make lead products such as pipe. The machine features decorative gothic design elements even though it was never intended to be displayed to the public.

An interesting piece of manufacturing equipment on display is a ribbon glass machine that was used by Corning Glass. This machine was introduced in the 1920s and revolutionized the manufacture of lightbulbs. It could take a ribbon of molten glass and blow it into moving molds to make 600 to 700 glass lightbulb casings a minute. There are 600 glass casings in the stack in the photo. 

At the edge of Made in America is a display showing all the parts of a Model T. It is really quite remarkable in its simplicity.

There was also a room where you could watch technicians working on restoration projects. It is a painstaking process.

The dominant feature in the Your Place in Time exhibit is the Dimaxion House. The name comes from dynamic maximum tension. An aluminum house was first designed by Buckminster Fuller in the 1920s as strong, low-cost, mass-produced housing. Several prototypes were built in the 1940s, and this is the only one to survive. One of Fuller's investors used the house as an addition to an existing ranch house until 1970. The Dimaxion was donated to the museum in 1990 and underwent extensive restoration. It didn't go on display until 2001.

The next photo shows the living room-dining room.

The agriculture section had a lot of farm equipment similar to what we have seen in other museums. One unique item was the experimental tractor designed by Henry Ford around 1907. He called it his "automotive plow." One reason Henry Ford was so interested in things mechanical was his dislike for back-breaking farm work. He had a lifelong desire to make farmers' work easier. Therefore, it is no surprise he would eventually begin manufacturing tractors.

With Liberty and Justice for All has numerous exhibits of historical American artifacts. They have Lincoln's chair from Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot. Unfortunately, the lighting was very low to prevent fading of the chair's fabric, so we couldn't get a good photo.

They also have the camp box and folding cot used by George Washington. The mattress sure doesn't look like it would provide much comfort, but it was still probably better than sleeping on the rocky ground.

Liberty and Justice for All also has several displays on the Civil Rights Movement. The refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a bus in 1955 was one of the first acts of civil disobedience that was to become the hallmark of the movement. The Henry Ford Museum has the actual bus that Rosa Parks was riding that day back in Montgomery, Alabama.

We were a little earlier leaving the museum than we were leaving Greenfield Village the week before. That helped us avoid heavier traffic on the way back to the motor home. We had the rest of that day and the following day to relax and do our usual pre-departure chores before heading to our next destination. We'll have more info in our next post.