Okay, let’s be fully honest, even blunt, about this. Driving across the Great Plains really ain’t all that great. Especially at 65 mph in a large motorhome with a car in tow. I love driving Liscia, but it does get a bit blase after hundreds of miles of, well, not much to look at. Hence, no pictures will we share with you. But to get where we’re going, it’s just a just small part of the journey.

On our third day we arrived in Green Lake, WI, my adopted home town. My brother Gary and his family were there as well, so we were able to spend time hanging out with them. We enjoyed several of our favorite restaurants, boated and floated on the lake, and played games. For a change from his usual spot in the left seat of a 737, Gary even took the helm of Liscia for a bit. And of course we played pickleball, both at our campground with friends we met there last year and at a very welcoming church across the lake.

From there we headed north to Manistique, MI with two goals in mind. One was to take in the beauty of the one portion of Lake Michigan we never made it to aboard Joy Girl. We were not disappointed in the area nor the nice little campground in the woods and right on the lake.

Our bigger and more important objective of the stop was to visit with and celebrate a milestone birthday with my long time friend Dave Parker (45 years qualifies as long time, right?). Dave is the multi-talented musician and songwriter with whom I worked for several years in the early 80’s. I won’t say how old Dave is but it does start with a 7 and end with a 0. When the two of us get together, the old memories and stories flow and it’s as though we’ve never even been apart. It’s immediately apparent why we’ve been buddies for so long, and at times it even raises the question of if we might be related!

From Manistique it was on to our home for the next month, Petoskey, MI. Getting there involves a drive over the 5 mile long Mackinac Bridge, and I will say that driving a 13 foot high motorhome along the edge of a 200 foot high bridge is just not fun for the quite acrophobic helmsman. Okay, for me it bordered on right terrifying! But we survived, my heart rate returned to normal, and now we’re settled into our home until mid August.

I’ll leave it at that, but no doubt Niki will be back at the keyboard with another update soon. Until then, thanks for joining us on our adventure. We’ll see you down the line.