Eight days into trek south!

A slight break from our trek south to the Florida Keys was for me a stop in Dexter, Mi with my son and his family as well as my daughter  Anne and her husband, Daniel for the celebration of Thanksgiving.  I am grateful for the ability to be with my children, their respective families for this holiday and for the chance to slow down the count down to Christmas and concentrate on all that we are grateful for in our lives.  Richard was with his son and family in Howell, Mi which we discovered is only about 22 miles north of Dexter.  We ate well, played games and I was able to become hoarse once again reading books to Safia and Lio.  Little Lio was  adding new names and words to his ever expanding vocabulary while I was there with them.  Fun to watch them grow and expand their personalities.
Richard picked me up on Sunday, November 28th to once again turn the nose of the motor home south.  We stopped for the night on Sunday in Lima, Ohio.  Large stretches of flat land for as far as the eye could see heralded the Midwest grain belt. 

Not only did we have to contend with the twisty roads of southern Ohio, fog rolled in to make it even more challenging!

White Birch trees in the foggy hills.

This bridge stood like an alien against the West Virginia sky line.

West Virginia, Mountain Mama!

It is great to not have to be anywhere at any particular time so we are taking our time and taking time to go a bit out of our way to see things that are interesting and perhaps never to be driven by again.  We continued our trip on Monday from Lima, Ohio to Chillicothe, Ohio.  We left Chillicothe in rain and fog on Tuesday and drove from the open farm land into the truly hilly hillbilly country of southern Ohio.  We turned left from Jackson, Ohio and found ourselves suddenly in the hill country of southern Ohio.  We passed beautifully landscaped, painted sparkling white homes of Amish homes and then within the same view, the ill kept trailer, yard trash and run down shacks that evoked images of the movie Deliverance albeit without the music of dueling banjos.  All this and over a hundred year old log cabins that people are still living in without electricity!   I would have enjoyed all of the scenery except for the very narrow, winding, no shoulder roads!  Trying really hard to just relax but, wow, those roads are really really skinny!  We came out of the hills onto the freeway of the very southern tip of Ohio to cross the Ohio River into Huntington, West Virginia! My second time back to the hills of West Virginia since we moved from Morgantown to Crystal Falls in 1976.  We continued on the non scenic roads (think four lane highway) to Charleston, WVA for the night. Fog shrouded, but 60 degrees!!  We are getting there!

On The Road Again!

Seven months almost  to the day since my last entry.  I had a wonderful summer in the one of the greatest areas of this country - Home- The upper peninsula of Michigan- Crystal  Falls, Mi to be exact.  The months between April and now November have flown and here we are back on the road again.  This winter we are leaving  almost 6 weeks sooner than last year.  We wanted to get out of the cold, snow, freezing rain before it hit.  Well, we didn't quite make it.  Yesterday we awoke to a sparkly frozen yard, trees and driveway.  A light coating of drizzle had fallen and frozen into place.  I decided we were going to make it out of the county as planned so sprinkled about 3 gallons of ice salt onto my rather steep asphalted driveway so that Richard could drive the motor home up and into the drive.  I do believe I put enough salt on the ground to probably start melting the icebergs.  No ice  on the driveway this morning but mist continued to fall as we pulled out of Crystal Falls.  We are  now in Mackinac City below the Mackinac Bridge for the night.  As we began the crossing it was pouring rain.  I do not like to cross that bridge in a car let alone the motor home and I was prepared to white knuckle it the whole 5 miles.  Richard, bright, sensitive  man that he is, ( who has experienced my panic on mountain roads last winter) suggested I take some pictures of the lighted bridge at dusk .  I hauled out the camera and was so engrossed with the act of picture taking that I never had time to even think about my fear of crossing the bridge.  We are safely and comfortably settled in a motel for the night and will see what the morrow brings as far as continuing the drive south to my son's in Dexter, Mi for Thanksgiving.  Our initial destination to begin camping will be in the Florida Keys.