the train museum, car show, medeivel times, and trip #7

Good morning.
Sorry for the late post, but I got up late, cleaned the Salon, and was time to get Craig up.

Our trip took us all the way to Union Illinois. A small town northwest of Chicago. Me met our friends from Wisconsin, Tom and Dean. The reason for this destination was correctly guessed by mark, The Illinois Train Museum. The largest collection of train and train related stuff in the country. Dean is quite the train buff, and was eager to go here.
Instead of leaving our usual Friday afternoon, we decided to leave bright and early sat Morning. We thought the traffic around Chicago wouldn't be as bad Saturday late morning, as it might late Friday afternoon. We were right! A fairly easy drive, about 6 hours. Stopped halfway for a little lunch and a road break. I drove the entire way, and it went smoothly. We arrived, set up and visited with Tom and Dean whom arrived the day earlier.
That evening we had tickets to the Medieval Times dinner show.
The pics aren't very good due to the low light, and me not being very camera savvy. :-)

It was a very entertaining show! Decent food and plenty of it. The horses were beautiful, and the 2 hour show was fun. The crowd was 'divided' amongst 6 knights who battled through various challenges. Of course, our knight was defeated. :-(
Sunday morning, Dean fixed us breakfast, and then it was off to the main attraction, The Illinois Train Museum.
This place was ginormous! An amazing collection of engines, cars and accessories of the by-gone eras.
Craig was trying to get me to take a picture. It wasn't suppose to be of him...:-)

The sleeping cars were so tight and cramped, it was impossible to get pics of them.

Of course, Craig was much more interested in the massive car show they had there that weekend.
So, we wandered around, looked at a bunch of stuff, decided we'd seen way more trains than we cared to so we left Tom and Dean to take in everything else while we left and went and got the Sunday paper and some groceries.
Back at the campsite, we relaxed with afternoon beverages and read the paper. When Tom and dean returned, they decided to cook some of the Koegel Hotdogs we brought from Michigan. They can't get them in Wisconsin. They served them with a tasty homemade chili sauce and corn on the cob. It was good.
Monday was a shopping day for Tom and Dean. They live in a very small town in the middle of no where, so shopping is limited. They were here to get their shopping fix.
Dean once again fixed us breakfast and then we parted, them heading toward IKEA, us toward Elgin, Ill and the casino. ;-)
This trip, Craig won, and I lost. We really need to get on the same winning page here. ;-)
Then to an RV dealer we saw off the highway. Always fun to look at new mo-hos. ;-)
Fortunately, we didn't see any we had to have. :-)
Then, it was lunch and an outlet mall. We didn't find anything there to spend money on either. :-)
Back at the mo-ho, we loaded the car, and did some site prep for an early Tuesday morning departure, which was a good thing since a series of storms moved through the area through out the afternoon. During the rain, I played on the puter and Craig read the paper.
Tom and Dean returned later and they had found some good buys.
For dinner, they cooked a delicious beef roast which they cut into strips and served on buns.
We watched a movie together and headed to bed.
Tuesday morning, I finished breaking camp, and we said our good-byes. I tried to dump at our site, but the macerator pump whined weird and wouldn't pump. Craig thought something might be plugging it and we should try to dump at the dump station. I had doubts, but at the dump station, it worked fine.
The drive home was even easier than coming. Not nearly as much traffic. We stopped for a late breakfast at one of the service centers and returned home around 3pm. We got there safe, returned home safe, and everything functioned properly.
It was another good trip!
And if your interested in the rest of the so-so pics click here for Medieval times, and here for the train museum.