Midwest Vacation: #5

Tuesday Sal and I drove up to my folks' in Kaleva. My dad had an appointment in Manistee so we meet them there for lunch at the newly re-opened House of Flavors. I got a brat with some deep fried cauliflower. The brat was okay but the batter on the cauliflower was too thick so they weren't so appetizing. I had to get some ice cream too so had a vanilla malt with extra malt. It was delicious.

The next few days were filled with puzzle-solving, riding in the car with Dad to his doctor's appointments, cooking, reading, watching baseball and hockey, and sleeping. Just like a vacation should be. I, of course, spent just enough time on the computer as well. I even did a little IT support for my mom when she wanted to figure out how to create PDFs on her computers. I hope that's working out for you, Mom.

Sal had to be back to work in Minnesota on Friday afternoon so she left early Thursday morning.



It was long debate whether she should go the southern route through Chicago or cross the Mackinac Bridge and go west through the Upper Peninsula. For awhile it looked like it might be better to go through all snow in the north rather than a snow/rain mix in the south, but in the end she made the correct choice to stay on the big highways through the more populated areas. She arrived safely home around 10:00pm after 13.5 hours of driving without any weather difficulties at all.

Mom went down to camp on Friday night so Dad and I had a quiet evening and then drove down Saturday morning. I had my camera out and was able to capture this family of turkeys crossing the road. It was my third sighting of turkeys that week. I was lucky to catch them with a background of snow. Otherwise they tend to blend in with the trees.



I just barely caught this fun barn as we turned south on 80th Avenue.



I spent about an hour or so looking around the camp lodge seeing all the changes since I'd been there last. It was awhile ago. John, Joanna and the kids got there around noon and Zander, Zoe and I took advantage of the ping pong table in the rec room to get some practice in. We all need it!

The people who were there for the meeting were about to sit down for their potluck lunch so we took off and headed south in search of our own lunch. We couldn't agree on being hungry or where to eat so we ended up at one of their favorite Chinese buffets near their home. It was soooo good. I had a few bites of sesame chicken, orange chicken, honey chicken and pepper chicken all on my plate at once. No wonder they call it the Jumbo Buffet.

Another fun note about the Buffet was that all the hand-written signage was in Spanish and what it said was that kids three-years-old or younger had to be accompanied by an adult. Three? So four-year-olds are allowed to go get food by themselves? I don't even think they could hold their own plate much less reach the food. The delicious, delicious food.

Saturday evening was the last home game for the Grand Rapids Griffins hockey team and was an important one for them to stay in the playoff race. I went with John, Zander, Joanna's bro-in-law (thanks for the tix, Fitz!), and his two younger kids. We had a good time. The team didn't end up winning but it was a fun game (and the onion strips were lovely). I spent a lot of my time entertaining three-year-old Elise who was sitting beside me. She obviously wasn't that interested in the game so I tried to get her to dance and play with me so she would have a good time too. The weather is supposed to be really warm on Sunday so we're planning on going to the West Michigan Whitecaps game so I'll get my hockey and baseball goals met for this trip. Woo hoo!