Round Lake

 It is so odd to me that Brian's dad grew up in Michigan City, Indiana which is only about 3 hours from here.  This means of course that he still has relatives in the area.  We were lucky enough to visit his cousin and his wife, George and Ursula at their cottage on Round Lake.  It is only an hour from where we live, and oddly enough about 10 min. from where we store our boat for the winter. 

 It was very fun to listen to them talk about their childhood as well as what other members of their families are doing.  My favorite story was one of  Brian's grandfather carefully struggling to take off the wood from a barn to save it.  He would take off a piece and throw it on the ground and then move to the next piece.  I'm not sure how long he did this but after awhile he went around and saw that his son, Jerry (Brian's uncle) and George were having a bonfire with all his wood!!!! Brian asked how long he ran when his Grandpa caught them and George said, "I'm still running!!!"  As you can imagine he said his grandfather wasn't too happy about it.  Anyway, I thought it was a funny story. 

 As always, they were super nice and we hope to visit them again next year when they open back up the cottage. 

 Brian's Grandfather (his Dad's, dad) built this Arch that stood over a narrow street at the intersection of US223 and Round Lake Highway.   It stood for 81 years until it was knocked down by a furniture delivery truck in 2009.

I just thought it would be a cool picture to have three generations of Merx Men standing by something built by another Merx Man.  The first of whom was named Charles and the rest are named after him. 

I was reading an article about the arch.  There have been requests to rebuild it but they can't rebuild it as it once stood for safety reasons because it is too close to the road and it wasn't tall enough so as of right now, this is what is left of it.  Just a little piece of family history.