Wandering With The Wrights

September 11th, 2017

Before I start the blog I just want to acknowledge that today is 9/11 and We Will Never Forget!

It has been four months since our last blog.  We spent those months at Illinois Beach State Park as comp hosts.  We were fortunate to get the Mon-Wed shift from 7:30am-12:30pm.  Nice and quiet.  We enjoyed the friendship with all the other camp hosts this summer and look forward to next year.

We spent a great deal of our time visiting friends and family which of course is awesome!  We also took care of all of the essentials: doctors, dentists, car serviced, etc.  We were part of a Wednesday night bible study that we enjoyed and really thank our friends Laura & Eric Main for inviting us.

My mom and I spent a week-end in Peoria visiting my brother Brian and my sister-in-law Anita.

I was also able to go with Carol Meisinger and Audrey Slosser out to Iowa to visit Mame Sage - the four of us all worked at EMCO Chemical's and have been friends for more years than any of us like to admit.

Except for one week-end in July we spent all of our time at Illinois Beach - which is not a bad place to hang out during the summer - we are separated from Lake Michigan by a sand dune - it is lovely at night to lay in bed and hear the waves lapping at the shore as well as a beautiful place to take Teddy for walks.

The week-end away was to House On The Rock in Spring Green, WI.  We traveled with our grandson Calvin, his dad Chris & Chris' folks Peter & Becky Wright - Cal is surrounded by grandparents and a dad who are always right - lol.

On August 6th Jerry and I hosted my mom's 94th birthday at the motorhome.  It was wonderful.    Some people drove quiet a distance to share this special day with her.  They had predicted rain but we were blessed and it stayed away.

We also celebrated my son's birthday on August 17th.

And another big birthday August 15th was with Gary & Sue Bouton.  5 years ago Gary received my kidney and what a joy to celebrate his birthday with him!!  Can't believe it has been 5 years - he has taken good care of HC, the name they gave the kidney and they are all doing well!!

Also in August, as if there wasn't enough going on - Jerry, Eric Main and Eric & Laura's four boys spent a day, a very long day, at the Oshkosh Air Show.  We also celebrated a great birthday evening for Jerry with his son Robert and daughter-in-law Amy on August 29th.  Must admit I was happy when September rolled around and we had all the August birthdays taken care of.

One of the few disadvantages we have found with the full-time life style is saying goodbye at the end of the summer

We will miss many but especially our grandchildren who are growing so fast - Calvin who will be 14 next month and his little sister Jeana who will be 5.

My son's family - hard to say goodbye to all of those smiling/loving faces

And our youngest grandson Vincent.  Such a joy and such a good little guy.  Jerry and I held him every second we could.  We got to see him rollover and he will be walking the next time we see him.

Had to add this in case some of you haven't seen this.  What a fabulous invention - a Baby Brezza.  The dry formula goes in the top, water is stored on the side, you put the bottle in push a button and bang - perfect temperature, which you pre-set, formula.  No shaking it on your wrist to see if it is to hot or when it is to hot running the bottle under cold water to cool it off while the little one screams.

 We left for the winter a bit earlier this year because on Jerry's Bucket List for 50 years has been to attend the Reno, NV Air Races.  This year they are 9/11 - 9/18.

We left on 9/2 and Teddy was a little anxious so I put his Thunder Shirt on - think it worked :-)

 It was a much faster pace trip that normal since we only had 8 days to get to Reno.  We did have a rest day in the middle but for the most part got up every morning and hit the road.  We traveled 1,990 miles.  We traveled Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.  We were able to add Utah to the states map we have showing which ones we have spend at least one night in.

We did stop at this wonderful museum in Kearney, Nebraska

It was very well done and very interesting

We took I-80 west which is the old Oregon Trail that settlers took when they moved west.  We sure have it good traveling in our motorhome compared to all that they faced.

When we checked into the campground in Rawlins, WY we received two little baggies.  One was for Teddy with two little dog bones in it and one was ours with two mints - very clever!

Saw a lot of these signs

Not that we would ever go that fast in the motorhome but 80 was the speed limit at times.

Our route on I-80 took us through Salt Lake City, Utah.  Up until then we had had great roads and minimal traffic.  However, Salt Lake changed all that.  We were so happy when we got through!!

We then started passing all the salt flats - I had never seen such a thing and guess I never was interested enough when I heard about salt flats to investigate.  Miles and miles of salt fields.

The top is very crusty and you can break the salt off.  There were people taking some home in containers.

We had not planned on spending the night out there (we were on a paved section) but it was BLM land and we were allowed so figured why not.  It was just our coach and us after sun et.  It was beautiful and quiet.

We are now in Reno parked in a field very near the Air Races.  From our rig we can see and hear (they started practicing at 6:00am this morning) the planes.  The time trials start on Wednesday and the big race days are over this coming weekend.  We are with several other couples and of course they are all into planes so Jerry is in his glory.  I am so excited that he has this opportunity to experience this dream and will fill you in on it in the next blog.

In the meantime hugs and blessings to each of you - Jerry, Carol and Teddy