On the road. . .

Last evening we wanted to visit a former colleague of mine. We had taught together for over 20 years and he recently had a heart attack and underwent open heart surgery to do four bypasses. Merrill lives just outside the little town of Mooreland where we lived for 27 years. I considered him a good friend and a mentor at the school. It has been about six weeks since his surgery, so I called and he said we could come by for a visit. It was so good to see him and his wife. He is now involved in cardiac rehab three times a week and it looks like he is making good progress. His overall physical condition has always been so good that he and everyone else was surprised by his sudden cardiac problems. But it appears he is on the mend and doing well. It will be several months before he is back to his old self, but he is getting there.

We also talked about his grandson Caleb. Please remember Caleb in your prayers. He is 20 and last week while using a grinder to cut a fender off a car, the grinding wheel shattered and hit him in the face. He has serious nose damage and lost his right eye which surgeons removed. He has over 1,000 stitches in his nose and sinuses. He and his young wife of one year are expecting their first child in August. They have a long road ahead of them and Caleb has some big adjustments to make. He was employed, but it is unclear what his future holds. The closeknit family is his rock, but there is much for this young man to face.

We left New Lisbon about 8:30 this morning and arrived in Gallipolis, Ohio, at the Gallia Jr. County Fairgrounds around 1:30 today. This is our stopping point when we head to Virginia. Driving any further puts us right into West Virginia and we have yet to find a patch of ground flat enough and long enough to get Phaeton Place in and settled for a night, so the plan is always to drive straight through. Normally we go directly to Charlottesville, but we cannot do that tomorrow because our reservations do not start until Sunday. So we have to take a couple more nights to get there. We are thinking we will stay on the other side of the mountain in the Stuart's Draft area and do a little sight seeing there. As you can see, there aren't very many campers up here in the campground.

Once we got here, we unhitched the car and drove a few miles back down the road to a winery we had passed by. Oh yeah!! I asked for sweet wines and they had many to choose from. I tasted and selected two very good wines. Then we made a fresh veggie run to Aldi and came back to the motorhome.

Tomorrow the mountains of West Virginia are on the agenda!

Till next time. . .

Dale