Friday morning we left Traverse City, Michigan about 9:30 a.m. and drove about 56 miles south on State Route 37, a nice two lane road that passed through the Manistee National Forest, a land of dense trees and few people.

There were a scattering of canoe and kayak rental places along the slow moving Manistee and Pine Rivers, several lakes, some lodges, and a campground or two. I told Miss Terry we need to come back here someday and float the rivers, which really looked inviting. There was little traffic, and we used the occasional passing lane to get over to the right and let everybody get past us.

When we got to U.S. Highway 10 we followed it west 27 miles, through the little communities of Walhalla, Custer and Scottville. At one point Terry spotted two big deer standing on the left shoulder of the highway, and just as she told me to be careful, they bolted across the road right into our path. I had to do some heavy braking to avoid hitting them, and the incident upped our adrenalin level by quite a bit.

When we hit U.S. Highway 31 in Ludington, a divided four lane road, we turned south, and arrived at Fisherman’s Landing Marina and Campground in Muskegon a little after noon. We registered, dumped our holding tank, and backed into the same site we had a couple of weeks ago. As soon as we had water and electric hooked up and the inside of the bus arranged a little bit, we drove over to visit with Rocky and Berni Frees.

We always have a good time with these two characters, and this was no exception. We went out to dinner, and then returned to their apartment to play Mexican Train, our favorite domino game. In addition to their cat, they were babysitting a friend’s Chihuahua, and it was fun watching the two critters playing and chasing each other through the apartment. 

Saturday morning, while Terry and Berni had a girls’ day out, Rocky and I drove to nearby Grand Rapids for a gun show. Folks, I’m telling you, if you had invested your money in firearms instead of giving it to some stockbroker, you’d all be a whole lot better off today! I had quite a large gun collection before we hit the road ten years ago, and looking at how much the same guns I sold back then are going for now really made me hurt. Most are selling for almost double what I sold mine for, and some for even more! Try getting an 80 to 125% return on your investments anywhere else! Plus, playing with guns is a lot more fun than playing with stock certificates!

Of course, you do have to know how to buy them right if you hope to ever sell them for a profit someday. I’m not sure my pal Rocky really understands that concept.

Rocky was looking for a cheap beater shotgun to keep at the place where he parks his motorhome at a cousin’s place in the woods. He found one on a table at the gun show that had a price tag of $100 on it. “Do you think I should buy it?” he asked me.

I told him yes, but to see if he could get a better deal. Rocky asked me what he should pay for it, and I told him to offer the seller $75 or $80 and see what he said. I couldn’t believe my ears when Rocky said to the guy, “Would you take $75 or $80 for it?”

The guy looked at him a second and said “I’ll take the $80.”

We had a good laugh about that when we got in the car, and I had to explain to Rocky that given the option of two prices, you can just about bet that every seller in the world is going to take the higher of the two! If you’re shopping for a new RV or tow vehicle, I wouldn’t advise taking Rocky along to help you negotiate!

Thought For The Day – If you’re born again, do you have two belly buttons?

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We left Bowling Green State University Friday morning, and though I had been worried that we might get stuck in the field where we were parked, we got out just fine. We stopped for fuel, then drove north about ten miles on Interstate 75, skirted the west edge of Toledo on Interstate 475, then picked up U.S. Highway 23 and followed it north into Michigan.

The line at the dump station in Bowling Green was really long, so we decided to stop at the Cabela’s Outfitters in Dundee, Michigan, about 45 miles north of Bowling Green, to use their dump station. Apparently quite a few other folks from the FMCA rally had the same idea, because there were several motorhomes waiting to dump. We also needed to make a bank deposit, so we unhooked the van and Miss Terry ran off to do that errand while I waited in line to dump. She needn’t have hurried, because I was still in line when she got back.

Several rigs ahead of me pulled up, dumped, and quickly went on their way, but you know there always has to be one jerk in every crowd. A guy in a big diesel pusher pulled up to the dump station, got out, didn’t like his position, got back inside his coach and maneuvered around a bit, got back out, still didn’t like where he was, and repeated the process again. Then he puttered around, opened his sewer bay, closed it, went back inside his coach, came back out, opened the sewer bay again, then opened several other bays until he found his rubber gloves and put them on.

Then he took out his sewer hose, hooked it to his tank outlet, realized that it was too short, and went to two other coaches until he could find somebody to loan him an extra length of hose and a connector, which he attached to his hose and finally dumped. That chore done, he rinsed out the hoses, unhooked the loaner hose, unhooked his sewer hose, replaced it in the bay, returned the loaner hose, went back to his rig and opened two bay doors before he decided where he wanted to put his gloves, changed his mind and got them back out and put them in a different bay, and finally got inside his coach. And sat there. And then he sat there some more. People started blowing their horns and the fellow ahead of me was ready to do him bodily harm before the fool finally drove off and the line moved forward, and eventually I was next in line to dump.

That was when an idiot in an SUV pulling an Airstream trailer came the other way through the parking lot and tried to shoehorn himself in behind the rig that was finishing dumping. No way was that going to happen, and Bad Nick went flying out of the bus to explain the facts of life to the guy behind the wheel. Meanwhile, the air was split with blaring horns as people who had waited patiently in line let the offender know that he wasn’t going to get away with that!

He decided to play dumb and said “Oh, are all of you waiting to dump? I’m sorry,” before beating a hasty retreat.

We wasted an hour at the dump station, but eventually got back onto the highway and followed it north until it joined Interstate 75. Traffic was heavy all the way from Toledo to Bay City, with some particularly bad stretches in Ann Arbor and Flint, where nobody seemed to know what a yield sign, a turn signal, or a rearview mirror was for.

By the time we turned west on U.S. Highway 10 at Bay City, I was more than ready to get on a slower paced road. An hour later we joined State Highway 115 and took it to U.S. Highway 131 near Cadillac, and with a couple more zigs and zags down two lane highways we arrived at my cousin Terry Cook’s place just south of Traverse City about 6:30 p.m., having logged just over 300 miles.

We backed into our usual spot in Terry’s driveway, received warm greetings from the entire family, and hooked up to water and electric. We’ll be here for a few days as Miss Terry has her annual visit to her oncologist, and we enjoy some time relaxing with family. After being up early every morning at the FMCA rally, the first order of business will be to turn the telephones off and sleep late every morning!

Thought For The Day – Over prepare, and then go with the flow.

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