I forgot to show you last night’s luxurious hotel in Sheboygan:

Today is our last day of touring the Great Lakes, and by the end of the day we will have come full circle.

We had a morning tour of the Kohler Manufacturing plant in the town of Kohler.

No photos were allowed inside, but the Clausens provided photos from the Kohler Design Center taken on a prior tour:

This factory manufactures mainly toilets, bathtubs and sinks.  They  have an interesting artist-in-residence program, but this tour included only a small part of the art Kohler has sponsored over the years.  The majority of the art is back in Sheboygan at the non-profit John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

We had a pleasant afternoon drive, with a few surprises:  a little creek running through a town, murals and sculptures, and a FLAG!

This flag was part of a veterans memorial at the ACUITY insurance company headquarters.  It claims to be the “world’s tallest symbol of freedom” and Wikipedia says it is the tallest flagpole in North America.  The pole is 400 feet high, and you can see it from a LONG ways away, as the Hulstrom’s photo shows:

After lunch we had a quick visit to the Old Wisconsin Sausage  and Smokehouse factory outlet.  Lots of yummy samples!

Finally we completed the full circle of our tour at our original hotel in West Allis (suburb of Dearborn), WI, and a group dinner at Mader’s German Beer Hall where we had our welcome dinner 3 weeks ago! Some of us dressed up, some of us didn’t.  And not only did we have our accordionist, Cyndi Krill, but we also had our own trumpeter, John Hulstrom.  And we had several presentations to Marcus (and Mary in absentia) for the wonderful tour they organized for us.

If you’ve been reading our blogs, you know how much fun this group has had this month.  There were also trying times…  A couple of Model A’s didn’t make the entire tour…  Below are photos of the Biebecks’ break-down which could have been really serious.  Fortunately, it did not occur when they were traveling at speed.

I believe the Dickensons had an issue that caused them to put the car on the trouble trailer, but I have no photos. Oops!  Correction, the Dickinsons were fine — I’ll report the trailered couple when I confirm the correct name! Other cars had relatively minor problems, but the group came together to and multiple mechanics fixed most problems. It’s amazing what a group like this can do.

All in all, it was a very successful tour.  Hope to see you down the road!