Maria and I have at this point been with each other for about a year, we moved quick! We were "engaged" as it's put, just with no real plans or a date, or anything, why not, right? The most that "engaged" status did is moved the label "girlfriend"/"boyfriend" which seemed a ludicrous label, to "fiance", which sounded more distinguished. I really wanted her to see the family outside of my mom, dad and siblings. We decided that we were going to make a trip to the Upper Peninsula to see my grandparents. It was a good test to see if Barney could handle travel.
We had sold the Jeep Cherokee in trade for a Chrysler Town and Country minivan, it was getting serious, already with a minivan and our family hadn't yet expanded. We loaded the van, and took off on our journey. Barney turned out to be okay in a vehicle, but during the entire trip, he would not go to the bathroom, no matter what we tried. A seven hour trip took about eight hours due to stopping at rest areas to see if he would go. Ignore the baby face, the purple shirt and flannel clashing, in the picture below, it was in style! This was at one of the rest stops as Barney sniffed but didn't go!
My maternal grandma and grandpa, Ruby and Lee (short for Lawrence) moved, to their retirement home in the Upper Peninsula when I was still in High School. They lived in a small town named Gould City, Michigan, it was so small, if memory serves me right, it had one general store at the corner. Besides my parents, who took me everywhere a child would want to go growing up, whether it was camping in a tent, a Dodge camper van, or a motorhome, my grandparents influenced me greatly regarding my travel bug. They purchased a home, taking a kind of risk because the towns in the Upper were so far apart and amenities were few and far between. The nearest hospital was a chore to get too, sorry, I don't remember the mileage to it. They lived seven hours from our home. It was the "risk" part, the possibility of being snowed in with minimal road travel, the lack of population, all of it inspired me. The weather in the Upper could be unpredictable, and since I've heard of many of my grandparent's travels through the United States, them being there was just another one of their lifestyle changes. It was another place in their life that they could make work, plant a garden, make and enjoy the things that made them happy. Below is a picture of my grandparents when we visited them.
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| Grandma Ruby 5/31/1934-5/11/2018 |
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| Grandpa Lee 7/26/1930 - 10/3/2008 |
When we arrived to my grandparent's home Barney went right for the gusto, he didn't pee, instead, his back curled, and stay with me hear, he hunkered down and popped a steamy squat on the grass when he saw my grandparents on their back porch to greet us. (I included the dump sequence because if my Grandma was still with us she'd chuckle at it, I come by my sense of humor honestly). We got a good laugh at this. It was dusk, the light was dimming as the days were growing shorter. The fall colors were striking in the woods at the back of their property. My Grandma had set us up in their Class C small motorhome. It was a bit nostalgic for me because she and my Grandpa took this motorhome places I could only dream about. I could envision them traveling to Arkansas, where my Grandma loved to look for gems, rocks, diamonds, even panning for gold on her adventures. It was uncanny to realize that they were at the retirement phase of their life, and that we were just beginning ours.
I will continue this in the next post, it's getting a little lengthy and I want to try my hand at keeping it engaging, hopefully I haven't lost anyone, yet. Thanks for coming along on our journey. Be patient, I'm not going to go through every single year of our life up until 2018, I'll skip around a little. I'll also have many more tales to tell on the Dark Nest Travels YouTube channel, our video creation, so don't forget to subscribe to that.