bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday-  Our original plan was to go to Kalamazoo or Battle Creek MI this morning. We discovered that we needed reservations for the Kellogg Mansion in Battle Creek and that Kalamazoo is a beer town, which has Beer Tours on Saturdays starting in June. So we changed plans.

We left around 9:30 to head southeast to Auburn IN to visit the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum.

We drove 70 miles east on the Indiana Toll Road($4), then 21 miles south on I-69 to Auburn. The museum is located about a mile and a half off the interstate in the beautiful original Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Headquarters building. It was $12 each to enter.

We had no idea that Indiana was a major player in the beginning of the automobile industry. Of course, we have already been to the Studebaker Museum, but there were 153 different car companies either assembling or building in Indiana! Many of them went by the wayside, either never mass producing or they only built between 20 and 50 cars. Very interesting!

Duesenberg Automobile & Motors Company, Inc. (sometimes referred to as "Duesy") was an American manufacturer of luxury automobiles. Founded in Des Moines, Iowa, United States by brothers August Duesenberg and Frederick Duesenberg, the company’s principal place of operations moved to Auburn, Indiana. Duesenberg was active in various forms from 1913 to 1937. A distinctive feature of the Duesenberg was the "bowtie" style front bumper, which used two pieces of steel, with the top piece bent to resemble a bowtie.

Corporate history

The Auburn Automobile Company grew out of the Eckhart Carriage Company that was founded in Auburn, Indiana in 1874 by Charles Eckhart (1841–1915).^[1] Eckhart’s sons, Frank and Morris, began making automobiles on an experimental basis before entering the business in earnest, absorbing two other local carmakers and moving into a larger plant in 1909. The enterprise was modestly successful until materials shortages during World War I forced the plant to close.

In 1919, the Eckhart brothers sold out to a group of Chicago investors headed by Ralph Austin Bard, who later served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and as Undersecretary of the Navy for President Roosevelt and for President Harry S. Truman. The new owners revived the business but failed to realize their hoped for profits. In 1924, they approached Errett Lobban Cord (1894–1974), a highly successful automobile salesman, with an offer to run the company. Cord countered with an offer to take over completely in what amounted to a leveraged buyout. The Chicago group accepted. Cord aggressively marketed the company’s unsold inventory and completed his buyout before the end of 1925.

But styling and engineering failed to overcome the fact that Cord’s vehicles were too expensive for the Depression-era market and Cord’s stock manipulations that would force him to give up control of his car companies. Under injunction from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to refrain from further violations, Cord sold his shares in his automobile holding company. In 1937, production of Auburns, along with that of Cords and Duesenbergs, ended.(above taken from Wikipedia).

Here is the front of the museum.

Below is a 1926 Duesenberg.

This is the etched glass window on the car. Most of these vehicles were custom made.

Below:

This next car was built for export. It originally went to Greece and was driven to the 1936 Olympics in Germany. During WWII it was used by the British Army, until they discovered that it used too much fuel during war time. So it was then put in storage.

There are so many pictures, I am just going to put some of them in… it is too confusing to show what model they are.

Above, this is the gear shift.

Above is an electric car. The batteries only held a short charge and the maximum speed was 20 mph. Below is a taxi.

Above was the front and back of the same car. Below is a car which was donated by the original owner who also restored it. Most of the cars had several owners.

These cars are so beautiful. It is a good thing that there are folks who maintain and donate these cars for show. The cars are all owned by folks who leave them in the museum. They are driven most years in a a parade.

We were able to sit in this one for a picture. I can tell you it was uncomfortable! Also, most of the early cars had Rumple seats which would have been very hard to get in and out of ….

We left the museum, stopped for burgers for lunch, then continued to Sheplers Pickles, in St. Joe. Unfortunately, they were closed already. So we continued further south to Grabill where we visited the General Store. It was really old fashioned with lots of sale items. There were a couple of other places to visit in town, but we were not interested when we found them.

We returned home, driving the 90 or so miles.

Sunday- It was a beautiful day with low humidity. We decided to ride our bikes around the beautiful Notre Dame campus. Below is St. Mary’s Lake.

Above is the 1871 Sacred Heart Basilica. Right as we arrived, Mass was ending and the church bells started ringing. The priest and alter boys left the church by this door and walked to their right around the side of the church. I could not get off the bike and get the camera out fast enough to  get a picture of the ceremony.

Basilica of the Sacred Heart

“The Basilica is a magnificent, Gothic-inspired, cross-shaped place of worship and welcome, nurturing Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. Many members of the campus community gather here amid its artistic splendor for daily and weekly Masses that are celebrated both in the main body of the church and in its basement Crypt chapel. Confessions, or the Sacrament of Reconciliation, are offered frequently, as are other sacraments—such as Matrimony, bringing back numerous alumni who wish to be married in this grand setting.

The stained-glass windows were first installed in 1873, giving Notre Dame the largest collection of 19th-century French stained glass in the world. Beautiful artwork fills this space. Also helping to lift the heart to God are the voices of student choirs that sing at various Masses. Separate tours of the Basilica offer views of the art and numerous cherished artifacts from Church history.” Taken from the tour of Notre Dame website. 

Below are my inside pictures.

They don’t build them like this any more! We felt like we were back in Europe touring some of the cathedrals.

The Main Building

“The Main Building, with its famous Golden Dome, is a centerpiece of Notre Dame’s past and present. Today, it serves primarily as a headquarters for administration, although it still contains classrooms, harking back to a time when it was a crossroads where students learned, ate meals, and resided. This structure is actually the third building to stand on the site. It was built in 1879, the same year in which the previous building was destroyed by fire.

The Golden Dome was added to this building in 1882 and was most recently regilded in 2005. The regilding process uses only about a fist-full of gold leaf to cover the entire structure. Atop the Dome, you will find a 19-foot-tall, 4,000-pound statue of Mary, the Mother of God, “Notre Dame” (“Our Lady”). With this beautiful adornment, the Main Building is 187 feet tall, making it the second tallest structure on campus after the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.” Taken from the tour of Notre Dame website.

The entire campus is magnificent, with all the buildings this same color. They have matched the new buildings to the old ones and it is hard to tell which are new and which are old!

Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes

“The Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes is one-seventh the size of the famed French shrine where the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette on 18 occasions in 1858. Visiting the site on one of his many trips to his native country, Notre Dame founder Father Edward Sorin vowed to reproduce it on the campus of his new university. A gift from Rev. Thomas Carroll, a former theology student, made it possible in 1896. Boulders from surrounding farms, most weighing two tons or more, were used in its construction.

A small piece of stone from the original grotto in France is located on the right-hand side of the shrine directly below the statue of Mary. To Notre Dame students and alumni, the Grotto is a special place to spend a few quiet moments, and especially during football weekends and finals, you might have difficulty finding a candle to light. Hundreds of students have proposed marriage here; outdoor Masses are celebrated regularly; and the Rosary is prayed every day at 6:45 p.m., every day of the year, rain or shine.” Taken from the Notre Dame tour website.

We continued our tour, biking back up hill, to this log cabin.

“This intimate lakeside worship space is used regularly for Masses, but it serves also as a reminder of Notre Dame’s earliest days. The current Log Chapel is a replica of the one built by Rev. Stephen Badin in 1831 as a missionary headquarters for northern Indiana. The original was destroyed by fire.

But the original chapel was standing when Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., and the band of brothers who joined him as missionaries from France to Indiana arrived at the site where Father Sorin established the University of Notre Dame. A Founders’ Memorial is near the front of the Log Chapel and is dedicated to Father Sorin and the seven Holy Cross brothers who stood with him in 1842.” From the Notre Dame tour website.

 

Here is Bob checking out the water pump ( it did not work) in front of the cabin. To the right is construction on the original Seminary.

This is the main quad with the school buildings around the quad. There were several smaller quads. These are the teaching buildings. The dorms area outside this area.

Hesburgh Library

“With Jesus depicted in a famous mural as “the Word of Life,” facing Notre Dame Stadium as the great teacher, the 14 stories of the Hesburgh Library make an impact on football fans and on scholars from around the world. The image, best known as “Touchdown Jesus,” can be seen over the north end zone. It is 132 feet high and 65 feet wide, containing 81 types of stone from 16 countries.

This building, which was the largest college library in the world when it opened in 1963, now joins with several other libraries on campus—collectively called the Hesburgh Libraries—to contain 3 million volumes, 2 million microfiche units, more than 17,000 serial subscriptions, and 12,000 audio recordings. The building is also traditionally an important gathering place for students on campus, whether they want to collaborate in groups, embark on a pursuit of study materials, or make use of the latest technology in their entrepreneurial research.” Taken from the tour of Notre Dame website.

Below is another quad with the Basilica and the Golden Dome in the picture. That is a fountain in the center of the quad.

Above is the Knute Rockne entrance to Notre Dame Stadium. There is a statue of Knute to the right of the entrance.

Each entrance has a statue of one of the famous Notre Dame coaches and the entrance  is named for that coach. The only coach I was familiar with was of course Knute Rockne.

We returned to the apartment, ate lunch and took a nice nap.

Monday- Memorial Day. We ate breakfast then rode our bikes around campus again, this time not taking time to stop and take pictures. We rode around the outside the the campus and past the dorms today, before riding around the different quads.

We returned the DVD and basically had a quiet day doing laundry and reading. The weather is still nice today, with lower humidity and temps in the 70’s. We watched the DVD “ Labor Day”, which was pretty good.

Tuesday- I had PT again at 8:30. When I returned, we went grocery shopping and stopped at Jimmy Johns to pick up subs for lunch. The grad students we are renting from have a cleaning lady, Stephanie, who we decided to keep using. She arrived at 12:00 and cleaned the apartment for 3 hours. She talked about 1 hour of that! LOL. Good thing that she does not charge by the hour. She did a good job, but took a long time doing it. She gave us a break on the price, as she did not have to clean the other bedroom, since we are using it for storage.

We ate dinner and watched  “Monument Men”. That was a really good movie!

Wednesday- I had a hair appointment at 9AM. One of the Mahjongg ladies, Cheryl, had recommended Dee Dee, and I really liked her. Meanwhile, Bob cooked the dog food. I returned, we ate lunch, then I went to Mahjongg. I won three games( in a row),a $1 each, then lost $2, so I came out ahead! Bob went over to the student center at the University and had a hair cut. Again, one of the Mahjongg ladies husband is a law professor at Notre Dame and that is where he gets his hair cut, so she recommended the campus barber shop. The guy did  a nice job of cutting Bob’s hair.

We watched “The Wolfe of Wall Street”, a not so great, very long, movie.

Thursday- Megan and PJ are taking tomorrow off, so we decided to run down to Nappanee to see the progress of the motor home. The refrigerator had arrived on Tuesday as planned. So we dropped off the DVD at the REDBOX, and bought some gas, even though we did not yet need it. Bob had received an alert from Gas Buddy that the gas in the area was going to go up dramatically. Gas prior to Memorial Day was $3.89. It had dropped to $3.74, which is what we paid today. Gas later in the day had jumped by 25 cents per gallon to $3.99!!!! That is ridicules!

While we were in Nappanee, the cabinet guy came by to look at the table and one of the cabinet doors. He is fixing both for us. They have not put in the refrigerator yet, so we don’t know about how much the cabinet underneath is going to cost. It is not a big deal, as they are just going to put in two side walls and use the same door we already have underneath the refrigerator. In the picture below, the plastic cover is still on the MH, but they had drawn the areas that they need to cut. The work will be done next week, so when we visit on Friday, it will look a lot different. The other side is not completed yet.

Our original plan was to take pictures, then go to Shipshewana to the shops. PJ let us know that it is Ascension Day and all the Amish are off. So everything was closed. We changed plans. We returned to South Bend and stopped for lunch at CiCi’s Pizza Buffet. We had never been to one. $5 each, with the senior discount of free drinks. The place was really more for kids. The pizza was interesting. They had a nice selection, one of which was a macaroni and cheese pizza. They also had a cheesecake desert pizza, which was pretty good. We won’t go there again, as the pizza was mediocre.

We went to Family Video and joined their program. It is free to join and we have 1/2 price DVD’s for 30 days, plus some free rentals. A better selection than the REDBOX which only has the newest DVD’s.

We left there and went to the South Bend Chocolate Factory to take their tour. We arrived to a crowd of kids… 4 school buses full! We quickly left, as the place was a zoo.

We stopped at the Dainty Maid Bakery and picked up a couple more cookies, stopped at Walmart to pick up a prescription, and returned to the apartment. It was too nice to stay inside, 70’s with low humidity, so we packed up the dogs and found an nice little park. We were the only folks there, so we let the dogs off their leashes and they were able to run, play, eat grass, and sniff to their little hearts content!

We sat, in the shade,reading our books. The dogs finally settled in next to us, then decided they were bored. So we packed up after about an hour. We had seen a sign  saying “camping”, so we followed the signs. The RV park is in Granger, a few miles north of where I had the mani-pedi. The resort is a KOA . We went in and found out the price ($56, one night). They let us tour. We are thinking about it. We might park the motor home in a dirt lot near the parking garage at the apartment to load up when we are leaving and then go over there for one night. This is the closest park, about 8 miles away. We will be tired, so we could spend the night there, then leave the area.

We returned home, ate dinner and watched the DVD “3 days to Kill”, which was okay.

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