Transitions Part 2, A 1700 Mile Adventure!

Hello, my blog reading friends! You may recall that back on July 10, 2013, I began a series of posts called “Transitions“, promising to continue the series a little later. Well, the continuation begins today, as part of the Review Crew’s Summer Blog Hop! I think you’ll find the Summer Blog Hop to be a fun ride, with 90 bloggers and 450 posts on a wide variety of topics. So, without further ado, let’s get on with the Hop! 🙂

If you went back and read the first Transitions post, you will recall that we had finally gotten our belongings loaded up, and were about to set off for our big move to Albuquerque, NM. And so we did, rather later in the day than we planned, after the delay of waiting for the moving truck to arrive until much later than expected. But, finally, we were ready to go, on the afternoon of July 30, 2012!

We headed west out of Port Huron, MI to Flint, MI, so we could make a brief (hahaha, as if brief visits and good-byes EVER happens in this family!) stop at my brother’s, to say good-bye to him, my sister-in-law, one of my nieces and her beautiful little girl.

Here is “The Batman” playing with my great-niece, Penny before we left to head on to another little side trip . . .

And here are all of the boys and Penny together!

From there, we headed to Northern Michigan, more specifically Rapid City and Bellaire, MI, to see my mother’s last surviving siblings, Aunt Marge and Uncle Jim, and their respective spouses, Uncle Leon and Aunt Ann. They are all elderly, and I wanted very much to see them before we moved so far away, so my husband made it workable for us. I’m so grateful to him for doing that for me . . .

With our late start, and then a longer stop than we planned in Flint, we didn’t get to our motel (The All Seasons Motel in Bellaire) until about 10:00 p.m., but they were ready for us, after my husband had called them to say we were delayed. It was a small, basic room, which was fine for us. We just needed a place to sleep, shower and change, as we spent most of our time there either with my aunts and uncles, or swimming, or roaming around the village of Alden, showing the kids some of the places we went to when I was younger.

“The Batman” and “The Artist, bedding down for the night . . .

Mr. “Loquacious”, sound asleep . . .

And the “Puzzler”, totally zonked out!

Spending the morning at Torch Lake, in Rapid City MI . . .

“Mom! Are you SURE this water is warm enough?!” (Torch Lake is a spring fed lake, and cold when first going in, lol!

They soon decided it was worth it, though!

In Alden, MI wandering around before heading back over to see the aunts and uncles one final time before heading west . . .

This sign is right at the edge of the lake in the village of Alden . . .

Torch Lake has been rated by National Geographic as the cleanest lake in America, and the third cleanest in the world!

One of the shops we like in Alden . . .

Carter’s Candles, I still have a Petoskey stone magnet from this store that my husband and I bought on our honeymoon 23 years ago!

Love the new Alden sign posts!

At this point, we’d checked out of the motel, and gone back to see my aunts and uncles one last time. Here are the boys with my Aunt Marge and Uncle Leon . . .

And here is the only picture that came out of me with them, I look half asleep, lol!

After saying good-bye one last time, we headed down the road to my Uncle Jim’s house to see him and his wife, my Aunt Ann, one final time . . .

It was a difficult good-bye for me. As I said before, my Aunt Marge and my Uncle Jim are my mother’s last surviving siblings, and they and their spouses are all in their late seventies and eighties, so this was very likely my last time I will ever see them. It was very quiet in the car for a while after we left . . .

We then headed west, and as we were going through the area of Holland Michigan, I phoned my Aunt Carol, who lives there with her new husband. She is my Uncle Keith’s widow, and I so loved him, and her, so I was hoping we could meet up briefly. She didn’t answer her phone, but called me back shortly after we passed Holland. We turned back, and met her at a road-side farmer’s market.

Here are the boys, entertaining themselves while we wait for Carol to meet us . . .

We followed her over to the beach on Lake Michigan, someplace we’d never been, which meant we’d now driven from the east coast of Michigan (Port Huron) to the west coast of Michigan!

Here are the boys with my Aunt Carol . . .

and here’s one with just me and my aunt!

And now, we were truly leaving Michigan, on August 1, 2012, with our next stop being a quick night in a motel in Indiana. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next leg of the journey, because it starts out super FUN (see the sarcasm there, lol?)

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