Alice's Restaurant, Biking, and the New Tires/Wheels are here!

August 28 - 29 2013   

Wednesday the 28th we mostly just chilled after getting everything set up for repair of the RV.  I decided to also file a damage claim with Goodyear; we will see where that goes! 

To file the claim I needed to let Goodyear know where the tire is so they can ship it to Akron Ohio for analysis.  I left the shredded tire at the repair shop here in Iron City with no instruction to hang on to it.  So this morning I went the shop to identify the tire and have them hold on to it until Goodyear calls for it.

We were interested in trying Alice’s Restaurant here in town so I asked the guys about it at the tire shop.  The guys in the tire shop couldn't stop talking about how good the food was there.  It’s sort of funny, in small rural towns when you strike up a conversation everybody gets involved and most all work stops.  

When I asked the guy behind the counter about Alice’s I found out that the place was owned by his ex-wife’s mother.  His Ex’s grandmother was also the first cook who produced most of the recipes they still have today.  This conversation went on to include what seemed a review of every menu item including everybody’s favorites.  We had involved several other customers and now we had mechanics from the shop in the conversation.  After a good 15 minutes of this we all said our goodbyes and I left.  I came there to pick up my tire and pay them for their work, neither of which happened. I returned just after I got out side and we started over, this time, me leaving with the tire. 

This sort of thing has been happening with me ever since we arrived in Michigan.

So, after getting the rave reviews from the crowd at the tire shop, we decided to try out Alice’s Restaurant for dinner. Alice’s is mainly an Italian restaurant that has steaks and some seafood.  We learned that they make all of their salad dressings and pasta.  That includes the cheese and meat raviolis.  

We decided on a tenderloin steak (Filet Mignon for the city folks).  It comes with bread and bread sticks, salad or soup, and a potato all for $17.95!  We also had a bottle of very good wine for an extra cost of $21.  We do not say this very often, but the steak was to die for!  I can’t remember having a steak that tender and tasty.  This includes steaks I have cooked from butcher shops, the steaks were that good.  The whole meal tab was $68 with the tip!  Oh, and Alice’s is only a 10 minute walk from our site!

Thursday the 29th we rode our bikes the entire length of the Apple Blossom Trail.  Our RV Park is located near the end of the trail with about 1.5 miles of the trail to the north and 3 miles to the south.  We walked a round trip of 4 miles (2 miles there and back) of the south part on Tuesday.  This time we went to the north end and then came back and went to the south end and then back to the RV Park.

This part of Michigan was originally an iron ore mining area.  I guess that is where the town names of Iron River and Iron Mountain came from.  As you can guess the mud here is a rust color form the Iron in the soil.  The Apple Blossom Trail runs over the old Chicago and Northwestern Railroad line. Along part of the trail is an abandoned iron ore mill that I need to get back to while we are here.  It appeared from the trail that the mill can be entered from the road side.  Anyway that will be for another Blog post.

The old ore car just stopped on the track suspended in the air.

Around 2 pm I got a knock on the door from the camp host. He said that FedEx Freight delivered my tires and wheels to the office.  I guess the Tiresandwheels.com person didn't add the "Site #7" to the address.  So I went to the office with our truck and armed with a razor knife to get the tires.  It was really not as difficult as I thought it was going to be.  The wheels with tires and lug nuts were neatly stacked and shrink wrapped on to a pallet.  All I had to do was carefully remove the shrink wrap from the wheels and then load each one on the truck.  I was done in 20 minutes.  By the way, the wheels look fantastic! The tires look like they really mean business.  They look like trailer tires for a semi rig.  I think we are going to be very happy with these.

Our new tires and lug nuts sitting at the office for me.

The tread on the new tires is very deep.

Tread on the original tires is not as deep.

Wheels are great looking!

The RV repair is now in the hands of our insurance company. The estimate was e-mailed to them on Wednesday afternoon. National General (GMAC) replied that they are now working on the claim.  However they didn't give us any time frame for their decision.  The repair estimate came out to be $1.7k. Once the claim is approved it should be about 4 days after that before the work is completed and we then will move on. 

We have decided that we are not going to plan our future travel until we have a more firm schedule for the repair.  We only have 2 firm dates that we need to adhere to.  We are reserved and have paid for a site at the Albuquerque NM Balloon Festival the first weekend in October.  The other date is for our flight back north for the holidays just before Thanksgiving in November.  Other than that, we can do as we want or need to do.
  
Around 5 pm it started to rain and it looks like it is going to rain until at least mid-day tomorrow.  After the rain it is forecasted to get cold here.  By Monday, Labor Day the high temperature is to be just 60 with a low of 41.  Then it never gets out of the low 60s the rest of the week.  I think we are just a little too far north right now!

We had a great dinner with grilled pork chops and red beans and rice.  We finished the night with a newer Clint Eastwood movie about baseball scouting.  The movie was good but way too easy to know what was going to happen.  This was one of those formula movies but done well so it kept your attention even though you knew the ending.

Not sure what we are doing tomorrow as the weather is not looking so good.  We are sort of thinking we will get a fish fry somewhere that has lake fish.  Other than that, we may have a lazy read and watch TV day for once!

Stay Tuned!