Thursday, September 30, 2010

Playing Tourist again

Today we headed south to see two historical sites, one was Roscoe Village and the other was the Longaberger Basket factory.   Sandy had a couple more in mind, but reluctantly she agreed that time might not allow it.

Before we left, Sandy apparently decided to see if she could fly!   It didn't work.


As we were heading out the door, I heard a thump and turned around and there was no Sandy.  When I called to see what was holding her up, I heard nothing, so it was back into the motorhome.   There was Sandy sprawled out, face down, not moving in front of the refrigerator.   She finally answered my question about what happened, she had tripped on MY heater cord.   We slowly got her turned over and up right, while listening to much chatter about how clumsy she was.   MY heater cord got a good lecture.

As we finally got her upright and on the sofa, she asked why the computer was on the floor and did it break the power connector.   Putting two and two together, she really tripped on her own computer power cord.   But I'm sure it was my problem anyway.

The good thing was that it didn't stop our touring.  We grabbed an ice pack to help her bruised knee and head and headed out.   Tonight, nothing has been said about the fall.   No visible bruises yet and the bruised knee did not slow down her walking today.


We headed south on county roads which really requires an alert driver   The roads were smooth, but hilly and very curvy.    Thank goodness our Garmin GPS kept us right on track even when I took a wrong turn or two.

We stopped at the Roscoe visitor center and learned all about the building of canals in Ohio.  At one time, there were over a 1000 miles of canals in Ohio.   The barges were self contained with living quarters for the captain's wife and children plus a space for the tow mule.   I assume that when the barge was going against the flow of the water, the mule was needed.  If the barge was moving in the direction of the water, less need for a mule.

The visitor's center had a wonder model  of the canal locks plus there was a nearly intact section of the canal with 3 locks nearby.   but not wanting to spend all of our time looking a canals, it was on to the Longaberger basket factory. We arrived at noon and ate our lunch in the parking lot after checking in to see when (or if) they would have a factory tour. (it was at 1 PM.)

The factory is huge, larger than the space for 17 football fields.   There is space for over 1500 employees , each with their own basket weaving station.  Our immediate reaction is that they are really suffering with the slow down of the economy because of the unused space in the parking lot.  Our tour leader later confirmed that they have downsized significantly.   Even the factory tour business is slow, since we had our very own tour guide for over an hour.   In the area where the customer can make your very own basket, they had space for 20 customers with only one in use.  In the factory surplus sales, they had 30 check out cash registers and only one was manned and she wasn't busy.  (There were only 4 customers in the surplus sales area, which was the size of a large basketball court.   They are probably running at one tenth their capacity or less.

We could have seen the entire operation by going to an overhead Mezzanine to look down on the factory floor.  However, we paid the guided tour fee and felt it was well worth it to get the detailed description from  the tour guide, a 17 year veteran of basket weaving.   After the formal tour was over, we then went to the overhead Mezzanine and read the displays and looked down on the factory floor.

Having exhausted ourselves with the walking tour, Sandy agreed that perhaps we ought not to go to the third location she had identified. It was time to drive the 50 miles back.  Besides that, I was concerned for her health.

The weather today was delightful, up to 70 degrees.  Tomorrow is may change and by Saturday, we're expecting rain.   Hopefully not anything like the east coast has been getting.  Tomorrow is the beginning of the Swiss Festival here in Sugarcreek, so good weather is very much desired.

Gene

1 comment:

  1. Tour guides .... well worth the cost!

    Canals ... back to the time when the fastest way to move freight was not wheels but water.

    Cords .... ouch! Would OSHA approve?

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