A short four-hour drive across Michigan and we are safely parked at Vacation Station RV Resort in Ludington. The weather is beautiful (tomorrow is supposed to be rainy) today and we just finished a 45-minute walk around the park.Joan cooked us a steak dinner with salads garnished with fresh tomatoes from my very own garden. (Photos are of our campsite and a nearby fishing pond in the park).
The park is pretty empty, but the office said about 20 additional campers are expected this weekend, but it will likely be pretty quiet here next week.
Pulling the trailer is getting easier and easier and you can sometimes seem a little color in my knuckles now.
Tonight is supposed to get down in the 40s, so we will likely be using our heater for the first time in a long time.
Not sure what we are going to do tomorrow, if anything, but I'll report back tomorrow night.
On the way here I had a remembrance of a vacation long ago. My father, stepmother, brother and I went on a summer trip to Blair, Nebraska to stay with my stepmother's family who lived in that rural town. This had to be in
the late 1950s or very early 1960s.
the late 1950s or very early 1960s.One of our stops was at Little America, Wyoming. My father bought my younger brother, Mike, and I a single-shot .22-caliber bolt action rifle. A JC Higgins model, I believe. If I'm wrong my father will let me know.
After being stuck in the car all day, we checked into the hotel room and then my Dad, brother and I headed across the wide open Wyoming plains to "plink" at army men. "Plinking" was what we call shooting at our plastic army. Little jeeps, tanks, but mostly enemy soldiers would be placed in strategic locations and we would take turns drawing a bead and shooting the toys.
My father was careful to teach us the safety rules for handling guns and I can still remember the sharp smell of gunpowder that would fill my senses after he shot.
What we didn't notice was the rapidly deteriorating weather moving in until it was too late. My father first noticed the lightning and he told us to move quickly back to the hotel, which was barely in sight at this point.
As we ran across the open field my Dad at first didn't notice that the end of the barrel was pointed straight up in the air, a perfect lightning rod on the flat plain. We made it back to the room safely, but I remembered my father later recalled that he should have dropped the gun.
I'm glad that he didn't because we had many, many wonderful hours of target practice with that weapon.
Departure: 10:04 a.m.
Mileage: 43965
Arrival: 2:25 p.m.
Mileage: 44194
As I predicted, I was wrong about the model of the gun my Dad purchased. Here is is comment via e-mail:
ReplyDelete"It was fun going down "memory lane" about our trip to Blair and the overnight at Little America in Wyoming. When we arrived back at our motel room Janet was apalled that I didn't drop the rifle when I heard the buzzing on the rifle barrel. What does a Californian know about the dangers of Thunderstorms? Anyway, we did have some good times on those journeys. Oh, the rifle was a Remington single-shot bolt action model that I purchased new for $16 dollars. (Your Mother almost had an attack of apoplexy when she heard I had purchased that rifle.)"