Many of you have privately asked, “Where are you?” Well, no worries, I have not lost my mind, returned home, or decided to stop blogging about our retirement tour: our retirement tour has not ended! In fact, our old van has performed marvelously (We did need to get the power steering bracket re welded by Mex Muffer’s in Madison, and I did remove the vacuum advance, and adjusted the timing to get better gas mileage, we are now getting a whopping 11.7 my last fillup, which beats 8 mpg.) Considering her age and ours, our journey together has only begun.

We have been visiting friends and family these past couple weeks and although we have experienced much, I am finding writing is more difficult without a hostile adversary like -40° temps and crosswinds that can kill me. It’s not that friend’s and family experiences are boring, it’s more like inscribing facts without purpose or growing trees without branches.

So, without boisterous embellishments I’ll do my best to not bore you. Refreshing our memories, I last wrote about reuniting with my bride in Wisconsin. Since then, together, we spent a few more days with Jackie’s mom, training her devil dog “Blue,” visiting her brother, our nephew, and a few friends of Jackie’s from long ago.

More interesting for you all may be photos including a shipyard visit to see my brother in laws yacht, a cheeze curds and bacon pizza, and a family antique.

And then there is Blue!

From our visit with mom we drove to Madison to see our son. He’s doing well and we enjoyed being with him immensely.

After a much too short visit, we headed south in search of more friends and warm weather. We first visited my sister and family in Glen Ellyn Il., then drove to the hospitality of Gary and Karen, Duane and Kay, and Rick and Kathy, all friends and folks we have not seen in a long time.

Our visits were too short and our experiences personal, fun, and blessed.

We are once again on the road doing the retirement tour. We left our friends Rick and Kathy Sunday and have arrived at Cumberland Falls State Park in Kentucky. We found an available campsite and hiked trail #6 to the falls. The falls are spectacular and the hike helped work off the piles of good food we consumed with friends along the way. If you ever do what we are doing, be prepared to eat and stretch pants a must.

We are now, today, in Townsend Tennessee. The best part about traveling is seeing friends, good food, and different cultures. So far this trip is scoring big on all accounts. I to hope bore you less in future posts!