Winding down. . .

Our time before "The Great Alaskan Adventure" is winding down. On the way home from Virginia, we stopped and spent two nights with our fellow Alaska travelers, Tab and Deanna. We talked about a few of the things that we wanted to finalize, like the satellite phone, etc. We made an adjustment to the trip because Terry is limited to altitudes due to his heart condition, so we made a bit of a change there. Surprisingly, he thought Alaska was going to be a problem with elevations, but it actually is not. It has some tall mountains, but we don't plan to scale them. . . only admire from a distance. He can't do tram rides up the sides of mountains, but he doesn't like those anyway. LOL We got back to the apartments in Goshen and are checking things out here in preparation for our trip. The service truck needs service and we have some things to work on for MinnieMee, our little Alaska rig. She is still in storage. We will leave here on Sunday and head for central Indiana for our routine doctor appointments, then once back here, we unload Phaeton Place, wash her, dump the tanks and get her ready for summer storage. We will bring MinnieMee over and complete the swap of items, then put Phaeton Place into storage. We leave May 22, give or take a day. Tab and Deanna are coming over a few days early in order to see his niece. We have a retirement party in Muncie to attend on May 18 and don't want to miss that, but afterwards will head back up here.

And now to catch you up on our activities for the past two weeks. . . We were in Charlottesville when we learned Terry's cousin Floyd had passed away. Floyd was only 51, but had numerous health issues for the last several years. He had been hospitalized since around Thanksgiving and he was not able to recover from various problems. Terry and I really wanted to come back to Indiana/Michigan in order to pay our respects and meet with the family. When Terry and his parents first moved to Indiana from Mississippi, this part of the family (Terry's dad's brother, etc.) was among the closest family he had and he spent much of his youth gathering with Uncle Bill and his family. We weren't ready to leave our daughter and family in Charlottesville, so we extended our stay there and climbed into the truck at 6:30 on a Friday morning and drove to Goshen, Indiana, arriving about 12 hours later. The next day we spent visiting with the family and attending the services for Floyd. He had been so very sick and while it's always hard to say goodbye, it was the best thing for Floyd. He is now free of pain and illness that had racked his body for so long.

After the funeral, we had dinner with the family at the church and came back to the house. We changed clothes and at 5:45 p.m. we headed back for Charlottesville. We drove to Marysville, Ohio, and stopped for the night. We started out the next morning about 7:45 and drove to Charlottesville, arriving in the afternoon. We did spend some time that evening with the kids, but we were pretty tired, so called it an early evening.

We never get tired of the grandkids. Ronan is growing up. Almost six now and he is very smart and articulate. He has a large vocabulary and listens well. I went to his gymnastics lesson with him, Tom and Aenea, and he listened intently to the "coach" and did exactly what she told him. Aenea enjoyed watching the "big" kids do their routines.

The last night we were there, Ronan and I played Chutes and Ladders and Candyland. After the first couple games of Candyland, he said it was his "turn" to shuffle the cards. It was easy to see that as he had the cards hidden from my view he was stacking the deck. LOL What a hoot. I told Tom and Tom asked him about it. Ronan assured him he was just mixing them up, but when he was finished, he presented me with my "own" deck to pick from while he had his own deck. Hahahaha. That was the quickest game I ever played. He went straight to the top of the board while I hung out at the bottom. It was too funny.

It was cold most of the time we were there, so we hung out inside. After we left, though,

the kids have had some warm days and they like to hike in the mountains. So I am including some pictures they took of their park time and their hiking adventures. Enjoy!

Till next time. . .

Dale