Mindy suggested I should blog our Western trip - so here goes! This is my first ever blog, so I have no idea what I am doing and I am hundreds of miles from Greg so this may be a disaster! I don't know how many nights we will have internet access, but we do tonight so here goes! The morning departure was covered with a flurry of facebook well wishes. Everyone said "Be careful and drive safely except for Thomas Rhett who wrote "Let Anthony drive!" which seems to fly in the face of the sentiments of everyone else! The best pre-trip comment came from Jan who said "Remember to back the family truckster out of the garage before you pack the suitcases on top Clark!" Aunt Chris who has been so encouraging about the trip called and texted regularly all day! We actually left on schedule at 11:00. (Everyone felt better about leaving since long-lost Simba arrived home on Thursday night after being missing for three weeks!) We covered about 350 miles today. Everything went smoothly except for a torrential rainstorm in New York - I had to pull over because it was raining too hard for the wipers to keep up. Fortunately it passed over quickly and by the time we got to Erie it was blue skies and sunny! I made some travel books for the kids to chart which states they've already been in and which they are adding on this trip. So the first hour or so passed with our getting them filled out and reminiscing about previous trips as they tried to fill out their booklets. I have them writing down when and why they visited each state the first time. So it was fun trying to recall all of those details.
Gasoline prices had dropped fifty cents a gallon by the time we got to Bowling Green! We stayed tonight with Nina Assimakopolis, a Houghton friend who is now teaching at Bowling Green. Anthony was best friends with her daughter Iliana when they were young. We had such a great time tonight! They have a beautiful home and Nina has become a vegetarian and had a fantastic Greek meal prepared for us. It was so much fun to see her again. Iliana and Isaac have grown up so much in the five years since they left Houghton. Tonight we had both an ice cream party and a campfire/smores party. In fact the kids and Nina are still outside telling ghost stories as I write this. The only downside to the day is that poor JonDavid got a migraine tonight, so he is already conked out and I wanted to stay close to him so I came upstairs and decided to figure out if I could set up a blog! So anyway, I don't want this to be so long that no one will read it, so I think that is enough for Day One. Tomorrow, if JD feels up to it, we will leave early and drive on over to Upland, IN to visit the Trudeaus and Aunt Barbara. I need to figure out if I can post pictures too.
JonDavid woke up feeling fine this morning! Nice spelling of Bowling Green last night... Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteIs Skip Cousin Eddie? I thin you need to assign Vacation characters to those that you visit. He has enough kids, but they are too sweet and cute to be the little Astroids. Can't wait to read more and this is a miracle because not only are you blogging but I figured out how to get a google account. Though I need to change my name, I didn't know it would use the email name.
ReplyDeleteI remember Nina Assimakopoulos as a prospective student at HC. I'm thinking that for some reason, she had to stay the night with us when we (Melinda Trine, Jaynn Tobias, Vicki DeFilippo and & I) were renting Bob & Cherie Brown's house for the year. I can't think what might have happened for the college to put her with us...unless she had maybe visited when the dorms were closed? Nina, if you are reading Tim's blog...do you remember this?
ReplyDeleteCarol Allston-Stiles
Hi Carol! How sweet of you to be reading my blog! I'll bet you are right about Nina because Denise Bakerink remembers her from her first time at Houghton - Denise was her RD at Lambein. I don't know if Nina is reading this or not - she doesn't go on facebook very often, but if I am talking to her again, I will ask her.
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