Wednesday, June 27, 2012

U.P., U.P., U.P. and Away...Day One

Tuesday, June 26th, we began our Upper (U) Peninsula (P) of Michigan trip. Nissa, our oldest daughter, and her hubby, Todd, invited us to go on their vacation with them. It is a driving tour of the Upper Peninsula.

We left home at 8am and drove to Dry Ridge, Kentucky for my favorite quick breakfast on the road...2 plain biscuits and a Dr. Pepper from McDonald's. Claude does not understand my pleasure at this breakfast but he does enjoy his Diet Coke and bacon, egg and cheese McGriddle. While eating my biscuit I happened upon the taste of bacon. I'm not sure how that happened but there was a bit of bacon in my biscuit. It was delicious and I reached for my Dr. Pepper to swish it all down. I had the most amazing flavor experience. The combination of a bacon flavored biscuit and Dr. Pepper suddenly tasted like the most perfect flavored plum I ever ate. It was just like I was having a little fruit with my breakfast. Yum!!

The drive across Ohio is tedious at best. The speed limit dropped to 65mph and there were highway patrol all over the place. Time just seems to creep by at this slower speed between 70 mph Kentucky and 70 mph Michigan.

At one point we passed the place that sells those big propane tanks people have by their home. In the center of their lot were two very large propane tanks. All around these two tanks were lots and lots of little propane tanks. It looked like mom and dad propane tanks surrounds by 101 baby propane tanks instead of 101 dalmations.

As we covered the miles these were two of the clever comments spoken by Claude and me:
  1. Claude:  My life is a constant stream of pills and batteries to power the functions. (He realized he was given the wrong size batteries for his hearing aids.)
  2. Sandi:  You know a hot flash is bad when you have to take off your sandals to get a little cooler.
We are trying to age gracefully but sometimes we just crack ourselves up with the aging process.

As we journeyed further down the road I sent this eMail to my family to see if they could guess where we were:

...Where we are? Think John Denver:  "So smile and be thankful next time you get weighed!!!"

The answer:  We were at Toledo, Ohio where the scale comes from. This was a fun song of John Denver's that Claude and I loved and thought others knew. Alas, not so much.

My dear friend Laura and I eMail back and forth when I travel and eMail is possible. I'm working on a piece of cross-stitch that has 5 little kids from countries all over the world on it. As I finished the first little kid, I took a picture with my cell phone and eMailed it to Laura. Laura eMail back asking how many things were left on my list to accomplish. Here was my response:

I brought 2 small books to read, the June Ensign, a baby afghan to crochet, the piece of seasonal cross-stitch I started, my next Sunday School lesson to prepare, and this piece of cross-stitch to work on. I also brought my laptop so I can play with my pictures each night. Ahhhhh...sweet rest.

Silly Moi!!

After a stop in Grand Rapids for Krispy Kreme donuts, we made the last half hour of our trip and checked into our hotel. Just as we pulled in front of the hotel, my cell phone rang. It was Katelyn, our oldest grandmonsters wanting to know how close we were. She had just finished work and was very anxious for us to arrive. We told her we were across the street getting ready to check into the hotel. We agreed to meet her at her home.

We met Katelyn and had time to get the air reservations done for the trip she is taking with Claude to Utah in August. That was so much easier to do with her sitting there and she and Claude being able to tell me at the same time what would and would not work for them.

Nissa and Todd got home from work and the 5 of us headed to the Pita Place for dinner.

Then we came back to the Tyler home for a brief visit. Katelyn was working on homework and we were able to share some insights about using Word and Excel. Then Claude and I went to the hotel to get a good night's rest before leaving for the Upper Peninsula (UP) on Wednesday.

First day...full and complete.

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