April 5 Thursday Day 39 tonight staying in Gurnee IL – Comfort Inn free night

Happy Birthday Emily, my my how you have aged!! Love jerr/Shirleen
``` if you read this before 9:41 I added many things.
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Well the road warriors got out of the gate about 11 am, as that would be 10 am in the time zone we would sleep in tonight. Maumee was a place I had been in my Hubbard travels, we visited the Andersons and looked at how they applied fat and vitamins to their dog food. In order to save the hard cash we had left and no ATM withdraw, we took off on highway 20. as we traveled down the Ohio highway I noticed a sign that may not have been appropriate for Easter time – For Sale Bunnies, dead or alive. What else can I say, don’t eat the brown eggs.

Time for lunch, we thought we would eat heavy this afternoon and picked our favorite restaurant in Middlebury Indiana, Das Dutchman Essenhaus. We have eaten there with the family in the old days and Michelle has dragged Mark Karbo there also. They now have two ways of dining, by the menu or family style. We picked family style so we could pig out for the day. All you can eat broasted chicken, really really good; mashed potatoes, noodles, gravy and green beans topped off by a dessert of 29 assorted pies. Of course I even had one and what did I do but ordered one that cost an extra 75cents, had I known that I would have done differently, mine was a apple turnover, Shirleen’s a chocolate, peanut butter, banana pie – she said it was just scrumptious. I said I have never heard her say there was a bad dessert. They have really added to the place, besides all the craft stuff they have a conference center. We looked through the gift shop. Shirleen found some cute aprons. Upon closer inspection she saw they were made in china for Walmart, someone didn’t check there tags closely!! On their placemats is the following, the same comment we heard yesterday at Lancaster. Amish country, we will do our best to offer you the hospitality that reflects our own conviction that God desires all of His creation to live in harmony. That is what our guide yester said about their deire to live in harmony. The following prayer was also included.
Give thanks for the fullness
Of days spent together,
The friends that we pray
Will be with us forever,
The feelings we’ve shared,
The food and good fun,
With faith that God’s blessings
Have only begun.

We got gas in LaPorte IN, that is also where we got off the right highway but after a couple of turn around’s we got back on to an acceptable highway, not the one we had planned on. We then worked through Gary Indiana and saw a Schugel truck. We avoided the tolls by going up a nice highway 90/94 but soon realized we would be diverted to a detour and we know what can happen then. We followed the directions explicitly and survived the downtown Chicago in the middle of rush hour. At least it is not as bad as one time before when we traversed it at 5 on a Friday.

We followed the directions to the Comfort Inn at least four times, finally found it, we took another free night, sixth one since we left home.

We light dinner this evening, at Max & Erma’s in Gurnee. A couple of wines a Fetzer cab and Sutter merlot for me. We split an order of Nacho’s, I got the sour cream and avocado with the salsa. Not bad, our waitress had the highest pitched voice we have ever heard, bet she could hit the high notes easily. jerr