As silly as it is, I am deeply contented to be sitting through a rain storm in my camper in Devil’s Lake Wisconsin. I’ll tell you how I ended up here.
Saturday July 15th
Everything was ready to go. We had handed off my cat, Mr. Fluffernutter, about a month prior, to my parents. Greg had officially quit his job, with a light heart, and on good terms! I finished by final sports medicine certification exam. I finished as much of my orientation for the new job as I could, for it being 3 months early. We had the house and utilities all prepared. We had our last dinner with our best friends, Lauren and Lee. (BIG, HUGE, MASSIVE, shout out to them, for being the most wonderful and helpful people ever! XOXO) They left with our dog and my car around 10pm Friday night. The camper was packed and tethered to the care. The car was packed, washed, gassed up, oil changed, tires rotated, and rearing to go. We even cancelled our Netflix.
We woke up at 5am Saturday morning so we could hit the road as soon as we could.
One of us was more ready than the other.
Overall, it was a smooth, relatively unremarkable day of driving. Beautiful roads up through the Appalachians.
We switched off drivers at the end of every tank of gas. We took frequent restroom breaks where we would sneak in a walk. We stopped for a quick bite at Moe’s. We even stopped in Erie PA for a beer break at the BrewErie, per the recommendation of friends who had lived there. Its an old train station.
We sailed from Charlotte to Buffalo without a hitch.
We arrive in Hamburg, a suburb of Buffalo, around 7pm. Our arrival was much anticipated by my grandfather with whom we were staying. I was able to introduce Greg to Grandpa, and it went well overall. Grandpa was impressed by Greg’s ability to reverse the camper in the driveway, and his thoughtfulness to have such sturdy tires on the camper. Luckily, my dad had really talked Greg up before we came, so Grandpa was prepared to meet “just a regular guy”. This is high praise from Robert Monckton. We grabbed some food, then enjoyed each other’s company and turned in for an early evening.
Sunday July 16th
We slept in. We ate breakfast. We hung out with Grandpa. We went out to grab lunch and a beer downtown. My cousin, Sean, made some excellent recommendations, and we got to enjoy seeing the area.
We came back to the house to pick up Grandpa to take him over to my Uncle Brian’s house to enjoy a nice family dinner. In a fortuitous turn of events my parents were in town for my mom’s 40th high school reunion so they also were at dinner. It was exceptionally nice, and we enjoyed being able to see Brian’s (my uncle’s) and his neighbor, Jessica’s (my cousin’s) houses.
___ Insert picture that was never taken here______
We returned back to Grandpa’s house, so he could be home by 8 o clock, so he wouldn’t miss his 9 pm bedtime. Wouldn’t you know, we got him so riled up, that he stayed up talking past 10 pm! For the second night in a row!
Needless to say, he slept soundly.
Monday July 17th
We again did not hurry out of bed, as it was only day 3 of vacation. We grabbed a quick breakfast and headed to Niagara Falls. I had not been in several years, and it would be Greg’s first time. We parked on Goat Island, and made a full loop of the park. Niagara Falls is New York’s oldest state park, and is older than the National Park System! We stayed on the American side of the falls, but we did hop a ride on the classic Maid of the Mist in order to catch the best view of the falls. We took a lot of pictures. Here are just a few rough pictures from the phones.
We headed back to the house and then enjoyed the evening with my parents and Grandpa. The day before Grandpa had mentioned that he had not had a pie in quite some time, and since my grandmother passed away several years ago, he had no one to make it for him. So I made him a cherry pie. This may ultimately be my crowning achievement of the next 3 months, but we will have to wait and see. It turned out exceptionally delicious. Fresh cherries, homemade crust, homemade whipped cream. Delicious! He even complimented it, and probable thinks it was more thoughtful than making him the first stop on my honeymoon!
Then we said goodbye to my parents and headed out to Buffalo to meet Sean and Anjee for a quick beer at another brewery. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we love craft beer. We enjoy eating local food and drinking local beer, so be prepared to see a lot of pictures of food and beer. I loved talking with Sean and Anjee. I am only beginning to discover how much we have in common! They recently finished a hiking and beer oriented honeymoon of their own.
We hit up Wegman’s on the way home, to stock up for the next couple of days of camping. Wegman’s is a grocery store. However, I feel like that might not be an expansive enough term. Wegman’s is THE grocery store. One grocery store to rule them all… Or something like that. Anyway, it’s amazing. They have a way too many tempting foods for it to be next to my house. My Grandpa feels about Wegman’s the way we feel about the US National Whitewater Center. We love it, think it is the best tourist attraction around, want to take all of or friends to it, and feel like we can have a meaningful conversation with anyone there. They are locally owned and operated in upstate NY, and if you do quick research, like we did in the parking lot on our way out, seem to be an exceptional company. They have a ton of hot food, prepared meals, and everything you can think of.
They have even have a charcuterie station. I mean separate from their deli counter, which is separate from their sandwich counter. I don’t know how many of you know Greg well, but he doesn’t have much a sweet tooth. It’s more of a meat tooth. His ideal dessert is meat. What I am saying is that he is a carnivore to the core. He particularly loves French food for the reason that he can have three courses of meat judgement free.
We were impressed, and definitely tempted to buy a lot of food that we didn’t need. We restrained ourselves and bought some of our usual camping go to meals, which I’ll tell you about later.
We got back to the house, tied up the camper, and headed to bed.
Tuesday July 18th
Again we woke up at 5am to get in a full day of driving. We had to make it from Buffalo to Devil’s Lake Wisconsin. This was 723 miles, and close to 14 hours in the car including stops. It was a very long day of driving.
I’ll tell you more about it later, and add some sweet pictures.
So at this moment I am just glad to be in the camper, listening to the rain, about ready to snuggle up in bed.
Honey Popping 