Glacier to Banff Day 2: Kickstart My Heart

Day 2, June 28, 2025 – Westfield, NY – Poplar Grove, IN
We hit the road at 7:30 AM, coffee in hand and the day stretching wide ahead of us. A long haul was in store, but the promise of roadside oddities, small-town charm, and one very cool vintage airplane hangar made it worth every mile.

Our first stop? Love’s Truck Stop. Now, hear me out. If you’ve never been to a Love’s, you’re missing out on one of America’s finest roadside institutions.   While it doesn’t rate as high as Sheetz on the culinary delights scale, you can pretty much do everything at a Love’s.

Need gas? Obviously.
Want snacks? Like, every kind of chip and snack imaginable: Beer Can Chicken flavored Pringles, Dill Pickle Goldfish Crackers, a blueberry pancake sausage burrito on a hot dog roller…
Looking for a new hoodie repping a college team you’ve never heard of? Done.
Work gloves with reflective patches that double as Cleveland Browns spirit wear? Got ‘em.
Need a spot to spend the night with full RV hookups? Pull right up.
Lottery tickets from a vending machine? Ka-ching.
Clean bathrooms? Immaculate-ish.(Better than most – A for effort.)
Need to reassess your life choices? Plenty of time for that in the parking lot.

Refueled (in both gas and spirit), we rolled toward Cleveland, OH, for our first official roadside wonder: the Euclid Beach Park Archway.

This arch is a piece of amusement park history, built in 1921 and once the grand entrance to Euclid Beach Park—a beloved Cleveland amusement park that closed in 1969 after more than 75 years in operation. The arch is shaped like a giant “H” (for “Humphrey Park,” the original name), and while the area around it has long since changed (the amusement park is now a senior living high-rise), the arch remains as a reminder of simpler times spent on the southern shores of Lake Erie. Workers were on site removing the faux stone exterior (making it lighter and easier to move, prepping it for a 150-foot move to keep it safe from modern vehicles that can’t always clear a 100-year-old structure.

We parked near an abandoned building, soaked in the strangely nostalgic decay of the area, and watched city workers peel back layers of time. A local senior with a pushcart wandered by, pointed at Rob and casually noted, “Barndoor’s open.” Rob blurted, “Oh jeez! Wonder how long that’s been like that?”
The man shrugged and smiled: “Who cares?”
Legend.

After a quick hop back on the highway, we made our way toward Fremont, IN, for a quirky and delightful bucket list moment: standing in three states at once—Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.  Taking these opportunities to stretch our legs and experience these unique sights across the U.S. might just be the real highlights of the trip.  I’m getting so much better at finding them and getting us there.  

Getting there was its own mini-adventure. Emergency vehicles blocked our country road detour, and we were too long to turn around. So we waited, chatting with a friendly officer with strong opinions on where we should eat lunch. Eventually we crept down a narrow dirt lane (County Road 1), parked near a stone marker, and walked about 130 feet south to find the embedded “M” in the road—the official tri-state point. It was simple, quiet, and weirdly satisfying. We left our first rubber duck of the trip on the stone, tucking it in right next to a painted rock left by another visitor.

Lunch was a walk-up food stand in Fremont, DJ’s Tempting Treats & BBQ—walking tacos, BBQ, burgers, and soft serve. A blast of summer nostalgia served in a styrofoam container.

We started noticing hitching posts outside businesses and realized we were deep in Amish and Mennonite country. Sure enough, as we gassed up, horse-drawn carriages pulled into nearby lots. Turns out, many Amish and Mennonite families work in the camper industry here—as farming opportunities declined in the area, the RV industry provided steady work for the men in the Amish community and now upwards of 50% of Amish men in the surrounding communities are employed by the RV industry.  They can’t drive RVs, but they can build them.

Then, with one last burst of energy (and after enough driving to make us wonder where our backsides ended and the seats began), we made one final pit stop in Schaumburg, IL, a suburb of Chicago, at the Prairie Center for the Arts.

Here we found the Awaking Muse—a stunning, larger-than-life stone sculpture of a woman emerging from the earth, stretching into the light. She’s powerful, grounded, and—let’s be honest—she looks a little peeved that she was woken up halfway through her nap – probably the one glorious nap she has taken in months. I felt her in my soul. She is tired. She is me. Get this woman a snack.

Surrounding the art center was a lush, beautifully maintained green space, and to our surprise, a family of mute swans, cygnets and all, glided across a pond nearby. Turns out the Village of Schaumburg brought them in to keep Canada Geese away—apparently the two species don’t play well together. Honestly? Genius. I’m putting in a vote for swans in Canton.

We stretched our legs, admired the grounds and left another duck—this time at the feet of the Muse.

Finally, we rolled into our night’s destination: the Poplar Grove Vintage Wings and Wheels Museum. It’s the kind of place that feels lost in time in the best way.  We parked near the museum, a 1930s art deco style hangar built as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Depression-era project in Waukesha, WI.  The hangar was in disrepair until the Vintage Wings and Wheels museum brought it to its current location and restored it. The museum sits alongside private hangars, Slim’s Garage (also relocated and restored) and an old Sunoco filling station.  We were lucky enough to stay over on a day when the museum was hosting a group called “Ladies Love Taildraggers” (a women’s pilot organization whose members fly conventional landing gear aircraft) who were finishing up their trip, a tour of Lake Michigan, and spending their last night flying, and celebrating here at the museum.  We meandered around the grounds and settled into our camp chairs outside the RV with bowls of Korean beef and broccoli to watch the fireworks from the Belvidere Heritage Days celebration a few miles away. As the last firework fizzled into the night, we sat quietly staring up into the wide, black sky, the silence deep, watching fireflies flash in the darkness. It was a fitting place to end a long, curious, and delightfully weird day on the road—parked in peace, surrounded by history, and ready to sleep beneath the wing of an old biplane.

And then we ruined it by turning on our generator because it was 100 degrees inside the camper and we desperately needed to sleep.

Mileage: 549+ miles
States Today: NY → PA → OH → IN
Rubber Ducks Deployed: 2
Hippos Still Holding: Steady
Barndoor Status: Briefly open, eternally unbothered

Cue up: “Kickstart My Heart” by Motley Crue– because here is where we begin doing what we love!

Coming Next:  North Dakota, wide open roads, and the long haul west…