June 18, Crawfordsville, IN

We had a relaxing morning hanging around Michael and Kristen's lake home.  They provided a most comfortable bed, breakfast and lunch interrupted by an incredible thunderstorm that played full volume through most of the night.  The best news is we were off the road, not trying to squint through pounding rain defended by 40 year old wiper technology.



The inside edge of this tire was missing!

My morning was spent with the Mercedes tire project. I looked at the front tires and couldn't see any obvious damage.  But the car drove like a shrine circus car with oblong wheels.   I waddled to a nearby Discount Tire. The folks there did a better inspection.  The inside of the left front tire was missing several chunks of rubber exposing the steel belt.  Unfortunately, the tire size was too odd for Discount Tire to handle -- 205R70/14.  In spite of several calls to branches all around Lansing this size could not be found.   I ended up getting 195R75/14.  This tire is about the same height but slightly skinnier.  They would have to do.  I bought two of them.  The car was incredibly smooth with these new tires.  I realized that the bad tire had been failing for some time but the deterioration in ride quality was slow enough to go unnoticed until the vibration was severe. 

While I played with tires, Nance went to the very small farm west of Lansing where Kristen buys milk, eggs and chicken.  She enjoyed a tour of the organic raised bed gardens, met cows, chickens and collies and talked with the family farmers about the log home and facilities they've built over the last 40 years.  They also visited a huge regional grocers market and nursery that had more varieties of chile than most places in Albuquerque!  As we travel through all these states in towns large and small we see signs for local Farmers Markets giving local growers and their neighbors a way to build healthier communities.

We wanted to linger in Lansing longer, but we had far too much distance to cover for that.  We considered taking a high speed ferry from Muskegon to Milwaukee.  We rejected it because it was quite expensive (about $270 for two plus car) and didn't really aim us toward NM.  Next time we might try it, it's always fun to get some water time on the great lakes.  We have taken the steam ferry Badger twice in the past, but it was way too far north to be an option this time.

VMCCA member Mike Huffman is a docent at the
ACD museum.  He drove his 29 Cord to work.

Opting for a land line, we proceeded south on I-69 headed to Fort Wayne, IN.  Naturally, on the way we saw signs we could not ignore for the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg (ACD)  Auto Museum.  It was raining fairly heavily and we decided to stop.  I have been to this museum several times, but Nance had not.  She enjoyed it thoroughly.  The cars are beautiful and what a story of the rise and fall of the ACD empire.  If you don't like cars, you may enjoy the preserved architecture of the museum building.  It was the original corporate offices for the Auburn Motor Company.

From Fort Wayne we headed west on US 24 and then SW on IN 25 towards Lafayette.  Because of our late start, we decided to stop in Lafayette, after driving a mere  250 miles.  This didn't work out.  The many hotels in this college town (home of Purdue University) were booked solid.  We were told it may be graduation or a FFA convention. No matter, there were no rooms to be found.  After being rejected by a few more hotels, we decided to head south on IN 231 to Crawfordsville.  There we found a scruffy but cheap and comfortable Super 8 and called it a day.

This is the ACD museum.  It formerly housed the Auburn corporate offices