Tuesday, Oct. 23

Up at 6 a.m. to get ready for a six-hour trip to the northwest part of the state. We left home at 8 a.m., and headed south to pick up Sis, about two hours away. Hubbie drove the truck pulling the camper, and I drove the van. Mother can no longer get into the truck, so it's necessary to take both vehicles, in order for her to ride more comfortably in the van.

Leaving the driveway, Hubbie took the lead, but there was so much traffic on the road this morning that it was a while before I could turn onto the highway. In the meantime, I lost sight of Hubbie, so I drove at the maximum speed trying to catch up with him. I drove quite a way without seeing him. How on earth had he gotten so far ahead of me?

On a two-way stretch of highway, here he came sailing past me on the right. What? He was behind me? How did he get behind me? He must have had to drive faster than he likes to when pulling the camper, trying to catch up with me! Later, he said he even honked trying to get my attention. Mother and I did hear a horn, but thought it was some emergency vehicle or other. I never did look in my rearview mirror, or I'd seen him behind me.

Later, he said he took a different route out of town than I did, because he didn't want to pull the camper up the winding hill. By taking the hill, I shaved a few minutes off my time.

He was surprised, though, that I didn't see him at the stop light, since he saw me. But I guess Mother and I were deep in conversation, and I wasn't paying attention.

It was a nice morning, cloudy, but with temps promising to rise into the 80s. Sis arrived at a department store parking lot at the appointed 10 a.m. hour, and as soon as we loaded her clothing and personal items into the van, we set off, with Sis driving the van, and me riding in the truck with Hubbie.

We stopped at a rest area around noon to have a chicken salad sandwich lunch, and then got on the road again. This is a beautiful drive through the scenic hills of this part of the state, which at this season, are ablaze with autumn colors.

At one point, there is a lighted tunnel that is a bit eerie. Later, Mother mentioned that she wasn't crazy about it. I think she's slightly claustophobic.

Another strange sight was a truck hauling an enormous windmill blade. Just seeing windmills in pictures doesn't give any sense of how enormous those blades are.

Arrived at our destination around 2:30. Information Hubbie gathered from a campground catalog directed us to turn north in the town where the campground is, but after traveling much farther than the one mile indicated, we realized this must be the wrong way. So we stopped, and Hubbie called the registration office at the campground. We needed to backtrack south.

Found the campground, and once we'd set up, Mother headed to the couch for a nap, while Hubbie, Sis, and I toured the area to locate the newest state-of-the-art museum in our state, as well as some other attractions we wanted to visit over the next couple of days.

One thing we saw was a gorgeous yellow tree on the town square. We'd never seen this type of tree before, and so Sis researched it on her phone. She learned that it's a ginkgo biloba tree. I didn't have my camera with me today, but I vowed to get a shot of it later.

Back at camp, I boiled noodles, and heated autumn stew and pumpkin muffins for supper. Served the stew over the noodles, and set out pumpkin-spice cream cheese for the muffins, which I discovered after I'd taken a bite, contains yellow dye. Phooey. Fortunately, though, I'd also brought along plain cream cheese, which was also very good on the muffins.

A problem with this campground was that the electrical breaker switched off several times, caused, we suppose by having the microwave and water heater on at the same time, or the hair dryer and the water heater, or something and something else. Anyway, it was annoying.

This evening there was a beautiful sunset...pink sky reflecting on a small pond overlooking the golf course across the road from the camper area. I grabbed my camera, and Sis and I rushed outdoors to enjoy it and snap some photos. Just as we got outside, we heard geese honking, and looking up, we saw a pair winging toward the pond. They made a lovely addition to the photos.

Spent the rest of the evening playing Skipbo. Mother won two games, and Sis won one. Zilch for Hubbie and me.

Funny: while we were relaxing this afternoon in the camper, I sort of saw something dangling between my eyes. It turned out to be a tiny spider that had somehow suspended itself from a web-thread attached to a hair of my bangs. yikes! Guess it dropped from the ceiling onto my head, and then tried to find a way to dismount.