Ghosts, Minnie Quay, Ora Labora

It was a sunny spring morning and we were taking off on an adventure to a couple “haunted” cemeteries. The first stop was the breezy shores of Lake Huron to swing by Minnie Quay’s pink tombstone in Forester. We were in for a surprise because of all the coins on top of the grave and some of the disrespectful litter strewn about. I walked around filming some of the headstones and realized, off in the distance I heard a whispering beckon it was a female's voice. The voice shrouded me, chilled me, and I ambled toward it. Maria was walking with Cocoa, through the many headstones, admiring some of the arcane inscriptions and detail and I was pulled toward the icy shoreline with video rolling. Before I made it to the damp sandy shore the female whispering faded and I looked to an old building nearby, two buzzards perched on top of an old shack, resting from a busy day of feasting on carrion and they followed my moves with beady untrusting eyes. Dead leafless ash trees shrouded the old shack and the birds eyed me further. I was startled as the whispering voice I could only identify as Quay’s continued to lure me to the icy waters. I walked, filming, startled by how hypnotized I became. I heard Maria call out my name in the backdrop but my head wanted me to venture onward toward the voice. The voice a beautiful song, elegantly dancing through the small breeze, mixed with the calm sounds of water lapping the sand, my feet were sinking into the shore and my legs felt the pains of freezing water that had soaked my pants. I backed up, but the voice, Quay’s, sang to me, luring me to join her. I broke from the voice, almost instantly forgetting what had happened and walked through the ancient tombstones and to the comforts of our car, joining Maria and Cocoa.

Our next stop was nestled among oak trees and old dead leaves crackling underfoot. It was the Old Bay Port Cemetery, otherwise known as “Ora Labora” (Pray and Work). It was an old eighteen hundreds cemetery nestled on a hill, neglected, worn and sitting in a dark wood. It was peaceful and serene as we drove slowly down the old Sand Road and made our way to the literal “dead end”. Maria took Cocoa for a walk through the cemetery and I filmed. There was an odd presence of energy as we strolled through many of the old German Colonist’s final resting places. The colonists had settled in the area and were wiped out by illness. It was a sad reality that all the hard work ended in death and finality. It created a true sense that maybe our life, as well as the life of many others as banal as it may seem, is still life and energy and ends in death, or was it a reminder that we should grasp life each and every day because ultimately we live to die? Questions I’m sure that surface the older we get.

You can view the most recent video of both of these cemeteries on our newest Dark Nest Travels video here:Ghost & Goblins Episode at Dark Nest Travels on youTube thanks so much for coming back and journeying through this thing we call life. I appreciate each and every one of you! Thanks for reading!

I Can't Exist Without You

I knew my clickbait title, may attract some of you. I'm talking about that travel bug that is itching me. We are planning a trip somewhere, which, if you've been following my Dark Nest Travels videos you would have been given three hints and may have figured it out. The past day has been full of that fluffy stuff that carries topics on your newsfeed, carry's memes in shape of ludicrous "hell freezing over" scenarios, but in me, there's an itch get the heck on the road.

Planning a trip is a tricky one, especially with projects for The Mothership just on the horizon, sometime in Spring. We are excited to get planning and are just waiting details, i.e, a date so we can put our plans in motion. But there are a few details, other than the realism that where we are going isn't "R.V. Friendly" (damn another hint)and will be renting a vehicle for the trip. The bug still persists on creating that scratch on our backs because travel is extremely intriguing and going someplace that we may have never planned in our past, has come to the forefront and we are ready to begin.

The first thing I like to do for a trip, whether it's planned or a last minute ditch effort to escape the confines of Dark Nest, yes it's a great place, but escaping it's small square footage is often necessary to live and to itch that scratch. I like do download all the maps required, and since we're not taking the motorhome, can use my Google Maps, which is the best map program used to this day. If there were a stand alone GPS unit that had Google Maps on it, I would own one. I don't like using the phone app when travelling with a motorhome, because sometimes the coverage that we carry doesn't allow for it, even downloading "offline" maps will not do the trick. So on this trip, I will take the time and download an "offline" version of my maps just in case there are spotty coverage.

The next thing we like to do, is figure out the gas expense. Most of you know how to do that by taking the miles of your trip and dividing those miles per gallon and you will get will get an accurate amount of fuel used.Take those gallons and multiply them by the average cost of fuel to get the amount.

Now I've just got the total cost of fuel for the trip, and the co-ordinates. We're almost there. I then plan where we're going to stay. With a motorhome, travel trailer, or fifth wheel, your place to stay is behind you, quite literally, the sheets clean the bedroom beckoning a weary soul tired from the road. Traveling with a rental vehicle your place to stay is ahead of you. I don't read too many reviews, but do love pictures, so I'll probably take the trips time into consideration, whether we need to stop the night before arriving to the destination or will we just drive straight through and stop at a room researched, which a lot of pictures, before the point of interest.

I can't exist without you,  a trip, whether it's a quick road trip, a jaunt across the states, somewhere, we can't exist without scratching that itch that has developed, especially with the impending news of cold, ice, below freezing wind chills and another potential Snowpocalypse. On that note, I hoped I helped some of you travellers that want to get out and explore, if not, there's other avenues to research, Google is a big place!

Thanks for reading, and if you're still interested in those hints of our travels, sometime in April, be sure to get over to Dark Nest Travels on youTube and check out the videos! Be sure to subscribe, we need viewers like you. Talk to you soon.