Written 5/11/2010
Packing and leaving the National always takes more time with less enthusiasm than packing and arriving. That’s a given.
Greg and I left on Sunday morning. Well, it was 4 minutes until noon by Eastern time. The dogs were very happy, almost sparkling with enthusiasm, probably in part due to the cold weather that arrived on Friday. It had been a very good week, even though we were spectators only for this trip. I was coming home with a fair amount of Newf goodies & gifts. (And an awesome copy of the Puppy & Panda print by Claire Carr!!!) All we had to do was get everything back into its former storage areas and we were off.
Coffee drinkers, make a note: There is a Starbuck’s in Birch Run. There is a good coffee shop in Frankenmuth too.
The roads were good leaving Michigan, and this time, we skirted Lake Michigan and turned south on 57 through Illinois. Suddenly, the roads were disastrous! Along for the ride was Terk, a purple gorilla with a banana and a New Yorker attitude. (We were supposed to meet Mary, who gifted us with this outspoken toy containig motion sensor, but she had to leave before we caught up with her.) Terk was in the front of the van between the driver and passenger seats, along with some travel items and the dogs were in the back, sleeping peacefully. The potholes were more like small meteor craters, and the dogs slept through those. Terk, however, began to say whatever was on his mind every time we hit a bump (or, black hole): “Hellooo!!” “Ow!” “Hey!” “Yo, what’s up!?” “Whoo-whoo-whoo!!” “Hey, kid! Remember me?” “Come on!”
The drive through Illinois was L-O-N-G, about 350 miles of it. We needed to make a detour into the Bootheel, which requires finding a bridge over the Mississippi. The Mississippi isn’t like other creeks, where the county builds a bridge for every road. There was a ferry at Tiptonville at one time, but otherwise, there are specific points of access. Greg had wanted to get a GPS, but I have been a hold-out. I don’t want to have to listen to a computer telling me which direction to turn and when, or whether I missed my exit. I don’t want to lose my confidence in navigating with a map. Maps work fine as long as there are road signs (well, that leaves out Boston and other part of Massachusetts, as well as Oklahoma). I do like Microsoft Streets & Trips for planning travel, and it has pretty much the same information as a GPS has. That is, if it’s wrong, why would you expect a GPS to be any better? (And I have run into at least one error.)
Microsoft Streets and Trips had established our route by crossing from 57 to Cape Girardeau through some small backroads. If you’ve ever been between the Mississippi levees and the river, you know what I mean by “backroads.” At 8 p.m., it was too dark to read road signs, too. We took our first exit according to the projected route and tried to find Cypress Street. After driving a little further than the map indicated, we tried to find a place to turn around with a one-ton van and a 25’ (28’ of) trailer. The best possibility in that vicinity was a drive that was almost wide enough leading into a machine shop that was closed. After a good 20 minutes, we were turned around and back on our path. After passing Cross St. a second time, I realized that Cypress was the road that we were on, not the road that we were looking for. We continued carefully, with about 6 more road turns ahead, and as we took a long narrow blacktop road into the darkness and crossed a low-water bridge, a car coming toward us slowed to a stop. Misgivings about stopping in this deserted darkness surged in my thoughts. The guy rolled his window down and said, “I’m lost. My GPS says that I need to go down this road. Do you guys know where 57 is?” I smiled all the rest of the night. Well, he felt lost, but his GPS did have him on the right road, even though it looked very doubtful.
The rest of the trip home was pleasant, and we found a new BBQ restaurant just across Current River called The Stray Dog. Perfect! Really cute dog stuff inside too, mostly Lab. In the ladies restroom, there was a print of a naked little boy, clothes piled on the bank, sitting on a board over a lake with his black Lab sitting close beside him, the two of them looking over the lake after a skinny dip. Lunch was very good, but if you stop there, be sure to tell them that the lady who spilled her tea told you to go there.
Dogs were just as excited to be home as they were to be in Michigan. Critical things were unpacked, dogs fed & humans went to bed.
Lovely trip, lovely Newfs, lovely to see so many once-a-year Newf friends!
