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Our car had given us a little issue to deal with, so we dropped it off at a Toyota dealership in Ithaca, New York, then headed over to Watkins Glen to hike in that state park. After picking up our car we had dinner at Silo Food Truck in Ithaca, then headed back to our last night of camping at Cayuga Lake State Park.

Our main goal this day was to get on a boat that would take us to lunch and three different wineries on Cayuga Lake - woohoo! Love the rare days like this!

On a lovely Sunday afternoon all the family that had come in for the Haubstadt Sommerfest celebrations, and all the family that lives in the area gathered at Eric's cousin's house. He and his wife have an amazing garage party zone overlooking a small lake, absolutely perfect for hosting an event like this. Everyone had a blast!

The Haubstadt parade is a big deal. The whole town comes out and sets up along the parade route. Anybody can just show up and be in the parade. We are convinced that people just call themselves queen of something and go in the parade. Is there such a thing as a candy cane queen? Usually it is hot, so both the watchers and participants are armed with water weapons. There is so much candy thrown out that the kids get tired of picking it up. Below are some videos that show what goes on at the Haubstadt parade

Friday the family met up in French Lick. That is about a 1 hour drive away. French Lick was at it's peak before the automobile......in the hay day of the railroads. There were direct tracks into French Lick from Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, etc. In those days French Lick aspired to be better than any of the spas in the world. Once the Automobile came, French Lick fell on hard times. You can learn more about French Lick at www.FrenchLickGetaway.com

During the day we tried to catch up on work. It was a nice day, so we decided to do a bike ride through the area that Eric grew up in. It was a very interesting ride. Ironically we ended up getting chased for a mile by a dog very similar to the one that Eric had as a kid. In the country, people often let their dogs run free. Eric had 2 dogs and he would talk about how large organized bike rides would go by his house growing up. The first people peaked the dogs interest and they would run down to the road. Then more and more bikes would be coming and soon the dogs had surrounded a biker and they would stop. Now everybody is stopping and Eric would have to go down to the road and reassure the riders that the dogs wouldn't bite. They were from the city and no dogs are loose, so they would be annoyed. Well the exact same thing happened to us on this ride. The dog didn't seem like it was going to bite, but it was running 25 miles an hour within biting range of the bike and barking like crazy. It was pretty funny.

Eric grew up in Haubstadt, which is a small town in southern Indiana. Each year Haubstadt puts on a big 3 day festival and a lot of people who grew up in the area come back. It is always a fun time. This year Eric's uncles flew in which added to the excitement. Unfortunately, one of the old cats died and Jake decided to have a celebration of Life.

Everybody was busy, but it was a really beautiful day. The day before we had biked past the USA Olympic Trials and there was a lot going on. We decided to go back and stop and check it out.

Eagle Creek is a fun little stream that runs past a State Park and then through Indianapolis. When you are kayaking, you barely know you are even in Indianapolis. We packed up the gear and headed out for a nice day of paddling. The pictures sort of speak for themselves, so we didn't bother captioning them.

This is a super fun event. On the second Friday of each month whoever feels like it meets in Downtown Indianapolis at about 7 pm. Then we all head out for a trip around Indy until about midnight. It is always an interesting experience. We try to make as many of these rides as we can.

We woke up and all met up at Cara's Dad's house and hung out for a while. Then we went and had some lunch. Cara's brother had a long trip home and they had to work. We headed north to Madison Wisconsin. Eric's mom's oldest brother lives in Madison and it is always on the top 5 list in bikable cities. The weather forecast looked good so we gave it a shot. We created 2 little videos that show our bike trips and some highlight pictures. I added them in different dimensions to see how they work on mobile and all of that. We are getting used to this program and how to use it so stay tuned. We ended up leaving after dinner and drove all the way back to Indiana and got home about 1:30 in the morning

Marion Indiana was a thriving manufacturing city back in the 70s. Since then the manufacturing has declined. There used to be about 60,000 people there, but now it is more like 20,000. Marion has a different vibe about it for sure. We met Eric's Cousin and his wife at a local bar. The bar is unique because they gamble their asses off legally, they smoke in there, and a dog owns the bar. On Wed and Fri they have drawings for big money and there is a huge crowd there. When somebody wins they buy a round for the house. So everybody gets a chip for a free drink. So usually on Wed it is 2 drawings so you end up with 2 free drinks!