31 Years Together

Happy Anniversary to us. We celebrated with all those days on the road, and today we had a very happy day together at home. We had one of our favorite meals, my Bison Chili and homemade garlic cheese bread. 

We talked about the trip, looked over the maps a bit and realized that we came about fifteen miles from Vermont without realizing it. If we had made that little jog onto another road, we would have gone through a total of nineteen states on the trip instead of eighteen, but who's counting? We logged a total of 6,695 miles, saw a son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, three aunts, one uncle, and more cousins than I can count. It was a fantastic journey, and the memories continue to warm us — far more memories than I'll ever put on the blog pages. 

There was one point at which I thought I wouldn't be writing any more blogs, and that's probably a good thing to write down. It happened the morning after I had written that we were leaving Michigan and I'd be out of touch for awhile, back in the woods of Wisconsin. No cell service, no internet. I wanted to make sure no one would worry that they couldn't contact us. John was driving slower than usual, since the fog had settled over the Upper Peninsula. Periodically he would pull over on the small strip next to the woods to let the idiots pass, and at the time I'm talking about there were about four cars behind us — nearly time to do that again — when out of the fog directly in front of us, and in our lane, comes a car passing another line of cars. 

It's strange how the brain can think multiple things at different speeds. I've never experienced this before, but at high speed, I thought, "Gee, no more blogs to write, and how long will it take everyone to know we're dead, since I told them I'd be out of reach for a few days?" At the same moment, and very slowly it seemed, my brain clearly thought, "This is going to hurt!" John barely had time to react when the car hit the ditch next to us, and he corrected to stay in our lane. The cars behind us all screeched on their brakes, but it was reactionary. Out loud, but not very, I said, "Thank you, God; thank you, John. I guess I don't need clean pants." If John had been driving even a mile faster than he was, we would have been hit head on. There was no more room than that. That was our only close call, but it was close enough to be grateful for the prayers we say on the road and the care with which my John drives.

Just for the record, here are the States we visited on this trip: Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wyoming.

Now our big plan is to stay here and let people come and visit us.