The Ray Adventures: Decatur, In & E. China, Mi.

The saga continues. We dropped the coach off at the factory in Decatur, In. for repairs. Greg, our service advisor said they should finish up Monday. Suzanne, Jeff and Harrison are very gracious hosts, I hope we don't wear out our welcome. Spring hasn't sprung here in Michigan yet, not seeing any buds or blooms, everything looks brownish grey. We're looking forward to coming back during the good weather.

Friday, April 3, Today is my brother's birthday! Happy birthday Punch. Looks like we got out of Kentucky just in time, there has been heavy rain and flooding. Greg, our service advisor came by at 8:00 (we had to set alarm clock to be up on time), to go over everything needing to be done. He was quite thorough and patient with us. He said it may take up to 2 weeks in the shop, perhaps they could start Friday after lunch, our appointment is for Monday. We don't have to empty anything except the clothes closet, the technicians will empty everything else and store them in boxes and bins in the shop. We scurried around packing our things to take with us up to Suzanne's house in E. China, Mi. which is northeast of Detroit about an hour. We took the closing papers for our timeshare to Fed Ex on our way out of town. PTL it's almost a done deal. We headed out for Michigan, thinking we would stop at Ft. Wayne for lunch, we passed a cute looking restaurant on our way out of Decatur so we did a quick U-turn, turned out to be a hog line, not our favorite type of restaurant but we decided to try it anyway. I've never seen a buffet with an appetizer bar, I would have been happy with that and the salad bar but no, I had to "stuff" myself with everything including delicious dessert. Off we waddled to Michigan. Our route took us from Indiana to Toledo, Ohio to Detroit. We picked up two new geo cache states within an hour. We arrived at Suzanne's about 5:30, a drive of 200 plus miles. As we drove through Detroit we were surprised to see all the empty buildings with no windows and graffiti all over. We took a wrong turn (of course) and drove through rough neighborhood. We wished we had the spray paint concession in Michigan. The town is just deserted, would the last person leaving Detroit turn the lights off? Jeff and Suzanne BBQ'd 3" steaks. They have a lovely home, with a pool in the backyard and quite a man cave in the basement with at least 20 trophies on the wall and a bear on all four's. Luci was quite taken with all the smells and promptly pee'd on the floor.

Saturday, April 4th, Jeff's brother invited us over to their new home they finished building, only moved in 3 weeks ago, for Easter dinner. Steve and Dawn have 3 kids, 14, 11 and 8, the oldest and the youngest are redheads. Nice kids. Jeff picked up Madison, their niece, who recently became a foster child, to go with us. Grandma arrived with 80 Easter eggs, Harrison, J & S son, hid all of them. It was so fun to watch them search the house for the eggs, some of which had special prizes. My grandma never did things like that. Steve made meat loaf, not your typical Easter dinner, but is was delish. He got the recipe from the Food Network. Jeff has a fun family.

Sunday, April 5th, Happy Easter! We woke up to a light dusting of snow, it was pretty watching the big flakes come down, thank goodness there wasn't much of an accumulation, melting before noon. We went to Jeff's Mom's for Easter dinner about 3, Steve's family was there along with Aunt Joyce, Uncle Bob and a friend of theirs, Pansey, 97 years old, you'd never believe she was that age. She is trim, dresses young and sharp as a tack, I'd have guessed maybe she was mid 70's at the most. Jeff's Mom, Elaine lives right on the St. Clair River, freighters pass her home going to and from Lake Huron, we didn't see any ships but did watch the ice flow by. In the spring ice breaker ships pass by so freighters can navigate the river again. It was strange to realize that just across the river, about as wide as the Willamette, is Ontario Canada.

Monday, April 6th, Stacy, our son is having back surgery today, not the typical ruptured disc, but he has spinal stenosis, the spinal cord narrows and compresses. The surgeons go in to the spinal column and repair the damaged tissue. At least that's how I understand it. He came through the surgery fine and surgeons are pleased with the result. The hard part will be getting him to follow doctors orders and not over-do. Gary and I walked 2 1/2 miles of the Bridge to Bay pedestrian/bike trail, the weather was "sort of" decent. We picked up a few geo caches along the way and saw a garter snake.
After, we had lunch in a local St. Clair restaurant on a canal off the St. Clair River. We were the only ones there, it was after 2. our waitress, a local, filled us in on the area. The best part, homemade potato chips with a reduced balsamic vinegar sauce on the side. We kiddingly asked her for some chips to take home with us, she brought is a large take- out box full with the sauce on the side at no charge. Didn't last long around here, everyone loves their chips. I made a pork loin dinner, with roasted red potatoes and a salad. Jeff goes to bed very early, his day starts at 3:30, he drives to Toronto, a 4 hour drive, to pick up garbage to bring back to Michigan for disposal, usually a long day due to traffic and getting hung up at the border. Suzanne and I ended the evening watching DWTS.

Tuesday, April 7th, A quiet day, I did laundry. At 4:30 Suzanne and I went to her hairdresser for haircuts. Lindsey did a great job. For dinner we had bacon wrapped shrimp, rib eye steak and a salad. I'm going to try this, it was delish!

Wednesday, April 8th, We had a lot of errands to run, Gary, Suzanne and I went to Nordy's, Costco and Gary went to a dermatologist in Shelby Townships. The counties are very small here and the smaller towns are called Townships. Suzanne and Jeff live in E. China Township.

Thursday, April 9th, Gary, Suzanne and I drove up to Point Huron, about 20 miles north, the bridge to Canada crosses the St. Clair River there. Jeff suggested we drive up there, at the mouth of St. Clair River and Lake Huron to see the huge ice flows. We had lunch at the Blue Water Restaurant, right on the river watching the chunks pass by. The weather was pretty dreary, as we ate lunch, a fog formed over the river, giving it an eerie look. As we headed back to the house it started just pouring, the wipers couldn't keep the rain off. By the time we got back, it had stopped, the wind died down and got real warm. The lull before the storm, as I was starting to take the burgers off the BBQ the thunder rumbled, sending me back to the house. Someone else had to finish the job. As we ate dinner, the lightning flashed and I crawled under the bed, well not really but I hate T & L as much as I hate snakes. There was a tornado warning for the area about 15 miles from here. Welcome to the mid-west.

Friday, April 10th, Gary and I headed into Detroit on our quest to visit as many NFL stadiums as we can. Ford Field is downtown Detroit, an area that still seems vibrant but a few buildings are empty and graffiti covered. The area the stadium is built was originally a warehouse for the JL Hudson company, similar to Macy's in that era, they saved existing walls, building from there. The stadium holds 67,000 but for the (ill-fated Seattle/Pittsburgh) Super Bowl in 08 they added 5,000 more seats. Beats me where they could have put in any extra let alone 5,000. Lydia, our tour guide told us how much it cost to build, she said 500 billion, I couldn't image so I asked billion or million. She said billion. On game day it takes a staff of 5,000 to take care of security, concessions, etc. While we were there a group of Cub Scouts were having a mini football camp on the turf. We saw the press room, locker rooms, suites, and went out on the field. The seats in the Club section are the actual seats from a Ford Explorer, very soft and cushy but no leg room, not even for me. In the suites the seats are from the Ford Navigator. After we toured the visiting and home locker rooms I asked Lydia where the cheerleaders locker room was located. Can you believe this, the Lions do not have cheerleaders, Gary asked what the guys were supposed to watch! The turf is composed of recycled tires and sand, the softest field I've walked on. After 5 games they take it up, recycle and replace it. Ford Field also has other venues, Monster Trucks and some kind of motocross. We got a call from Suzanne while on the tour, it seems Luci ate some rat poison and she was taking her to the vet. All is well, they put some kind of pill in her eye to make her vomit.. I've never heard of such a thing. We have to give her 2 Vit. K pills at dinner every night for a month to make sure her blood coagulates, rat poison makes the rats bleed out. We went to dinner at a small bar near here, out in the middle of nowhere for fish fry night, they are famous for their fried perch. We thought we'd get there early but the parking lot was packed already. We only had about a 10 minute wait, mmmmmmmmmmmmmm the fish was delish! And by the way, we Googled Ford Field, it cost 500 million not billion.

That's all for this week,

TTFN

Gary and Pam