I was pleasantly surprised how picturesque and cultural this rust belt city is. We strolled along the Riverwalk and had a late lunch and posed with the bronze Fonz.
Beer is an integral part of Milwaukee so a visit to the Beer Museum was in order.
They have a collection of brewery artifacts from the era of big name breweries. Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, Miller.
After a long drive back to the campground I came to the conclusion my back was going to be an issue. The next day as I was leaning over the sink to wash my hands I almost could not stand straight up. As the day progressed I felt a pain radiating down my leg and I could not sit or stand without immense pain. I tried to lay down and struggled to achieve a position without pain. I would have to go to the emergency room.
As you can see I have a pinched nerve and I was given a steroid injection and prescribed steroids and muscle relaxers along with the doctors orders not to drive for a few days. That was going to be a problem. We were scheduled to leave the next day, Friday of Labor Day weekend and go to Indiana. We checked with the campground and there was no opening to extend our stay there so I had to soldier on. J don't think I could have driven 10 miles without the cruise control. I used it at every chance. We made it and I really had to evaluate my condition to determine if I was going to make it through the rest of our planned trip. We had 1900 miles planned ahead of us. If we went straight back to Florida from Indian it would be less than 1000.
We arrived in Clinton Indiana at Horseshoe Lakes Campground where I was just going to rest my back and take the medication then we would decide.
I had to test my back so we took a ride into town for the Italian Festival in Clinton.
We walked around the festival and my back felt better. We made a trip to Walmart about 20 minutes away and I still felt okay. We would continue on to PA and the planned trip.
Our next stop was a two nighter in Wilmington Ohio and other than numbness in my right foot I was able to drive fairly pain free. I think my back had been working towards a major acute attack since California. With that attack finally coming it has caused me to slow down and decrease miles between trips if possible along with the long side trips. That is why our sightseeing has decreased considerably. If the campground we choose is more than an hour from an attraction I will not go to it.
That wraps up our travels through new states and experiences. Now we will be entering old familiar territory and encountering all too new problems as usual. Our arrival in Pennsylvania was greeted with a problem just as last year. This year it is a broken hot water tank. We arrived at my pal TC's house in Mercer again and set up in the front yard. As I was extending the slides I noticed a large puddle of water on the floor. I removed the panel in front of the water tank and saw the tank's supports had collapsed causing the PVC tubing to crack and leak water.
Great! What a fine mess! Thank you Ohio highways. After quickly draining out any remaining water I had to evaluate the damage. There was cheap, flimsy wood holding the tank about 6 inches off the floor above the pipes and that had cracked and the tank just collapsed to the floor pulling it out of the frame outside.
With the help of my pal Ron, who was visiting we eventually got the tank propped up on wood blocks and straightened out into the opening. Now it was nightfall. No water tonight but we had the availability of TC's house.
The next day brought futile attempts to repair the thing. It was time to call a professional. The Roto-Rooter man came and seemed to quickly restore the working functions of the tank. After he had departed I noticed small droplets of water under the fittings he installed. I had been running a portable heater to dry the carpet and was not sure if the new fittings were merely sweating (they are brass) or had a leak. Now a full day and-a-half later the water is still dripping. We called Roto-Rooter and the tech will return on Monday.
