April 17, 2009

Springtime in the Rockies

Easter Dinner

Bruce is proud of this roast

Mom's Gravesite

We haven’t posted to the blog in over 2 weeks. We drove 1800 plus miles in just over 3 days -spending an evening with Jim and Carol Stevenson in West Lafayette, Indiana along the way.
Barb’s mother passed away peacefully with family present on April 3rd and her funeral was on April 6th. Barb, her 3 sisters and all their families were present at the visitation and the funeral. It was gratifying to see the overwhelming number of people who came to pay their respects to Mom. All of her siblings were also present. The silver lining in this dark cloud of sadness was the chance to see so many relatives that we hadn’t seen in a very long time. So many of you have expressed your condolences and we appreciate your thoughtfulness during this difficult time.
After the funeral, we started working on all the loose ends. We did spend Easter with family eating a huge beef roast.
Tuesday, April 14 found us starting our drive home. We had decided to abort our trip, head home and then drive back to Ripon in May for Matt Peppler’s graduation from college. We spent Tuesday evening with Dwayne and Mary Hochhalter in Perry, Iowa visiting with them and seeing pictures from their trip last fall to Berlin, Prague and Vienna.
On Thursday, we arrived at Joan (Barb’s sister) and Jim Graf’s house in Littleton, Co to deliver some things from Mom’s house after 2 windy days on the high prairie. We talked about how miserable it would have been to cross those prairies in a wagon in high winds. We also stopped for a look at the Union Pacific train museum in Council Bluffs and Don drove a virtual train. Unfortunately, a spring snow storm is predicted for Denver and the Rockies (18-36 inches) - it is snowing hard right now - and so they are stuck with us until it eases up which looks like Saturday afternoon. So Sunday we’ll start home and hope to be back in Seattle by mid-week.

April 1, 2009

After talking to Barb’s sisters, we decided to leave Key West and head to Wisconsin as quickly as possible since Mom was quickly slipping away. We drove 480 miles from Key West to northern Florida. Our goal is to be in Ripon, Wisconsin with family by Saturday.

March 31, 2009

Sunset in the Keys
Mallory Square Fun

On Monday , drove to Key West where we walked down Duval St window shopping, checking out the bars and onto Mallory Square for the sunset and street theater.
We heard from Barb’s sisters that their mom had suffered a massive stroke and was hospitalized. Tests showed a large clot pressing on her brain stem that is inoperable.
Tuesday found us hanging out by the pool, enjoying the beautiful weather and keeping in touch with Mom’s condition. We drove to the southernmost point in the continental US. We have driven 7200 miles thus far.

March 29, 2009

We arrived in South Florida on Friday afternoon and spent the weekend at Brian and Whitney Neff’s house in Coral Springs. Brian is Don’s nephew. Brian’s mom, Bev Neff threw a belated birthday party on Saturday evening for Don and Brian (both have birthdays in February) with a lovely dinner complete with a tasty coconut cake made by Whitney. We spent the weekend catching up on paperwork and doing our laundry.

March 26, 2009

Sonny and Holly with us at dinner

Today we feasted at “Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House” in Savannah. This was our third try - first time, the long line scared us away, the second time, we came on a day they were closed, this time the trip was scheduled around this event. The menu included: fried chicken, pork barbeque, beef stew, sausage, and 24 side dishes all served family style. We were stuffed and drove to St. Augustine, FL so we could have dinner with Sonny and Holly Carouthers. Sonny was Don’s best friend in high school.

March 25, 2009

Georgetown, SC harbor

Charleston, SC Architecture

We decided to visit Darlington NASCAR Speedway on our way to the coast. - another of the old time tracks. We followed the back roads to Georgetown, SC which was the largest rice producer in the US in the 1800’s. We art a fish lunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. Wonderful flounder and grouper. We followed the coastline into Charleston, toured the historical district and walked Battery Park with a view of Fort Sumter.
From Charleston, we drove along the coast to Edisto Island, home of Gullah descendants. Gullah means freed slaves. We continued our drive south to Beaufort, SC - second oldest city in South Carolina - Charleston is first. We bought boiled peanuts and enjoyed them on our way into Savannah, Georgia. We toured the waterfront district and admired some of the park like city squares that Savannah is famous for. This city is also famous for its candy - so of course, we purchased pralines - regular and chocolate.