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Published: September 1st 2009
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On the road again! It was hard to leave the lake after such a wonderful summer but road trip fun lies ahead. Lauren joined us on our first leg from Fayette, Me to North Chatham, NY on Tuesday, August 25 to stay with my college sorority sister Jan Langlois and her husband George Vollmuth - two wonderful friends that have been Lauren's east coast parents for many years. Of course Lauren had to get used to her parents road trip behaviors - she may never be the same again. It was great to see Jan and George, enjoy a wonderful dinner with them and laugh as always. Wednesday morning as we left there were some tears shed by all three of us as we said goodbye for the year with Lauren off to Salzburg on Saturday - but we'll see each other at Christmas.
Wednesday, August 26 found us on the way to Niagara Falls, which Steve had not visited before...and many years ago for me. It was a trip back in time to drive all the way across New York State and see all those place names zoom by that I knew so long ago. We decided that Niagara
Falls is a bit like Branson- North with lots of honky tonk and touristy places...but it still is a tremendous sight to see. We walked across the bridge from the US side to the Canadian side - never walked into a foreign country before! We took the Maid of the Mist boat to the falls, getting appropriatelly drenched with our little blue plastic raingear - and saw gorgeous rainbows at both falls. Night #2 of my college reunion tour continued at Glennee Beams Falzareno's home in Orchard Park, NY, just outside Buffalo and it was great to see her and both her daughters Kate and Erin. Thanks for the bed and board, Glennee!
The next morning, Thursday, August 27 we had one of our more original road trip adventures. As many of you may know Steve and I have a somewhat unusual relationship when it comes to driving, directions, road signs, etc. Suffice to say that we had one of our less successful ventures crossing the Peace Bridge from Buffalo to Canada, due to a total inability to figure out which lanes were for which for customs...we ended up in the commercial truck lane, wedged in among the 22
wheelers, and had to explain why we didn't have a bill of lading! An hour later we were on our way, a bit the worse for the wear... Crossing Canada lived up to its name - lots of trees, not a lot of people - and this in Southern Ontario, the populous region! Wayne Gretzky is the local hero - wineries, restaurants, arenas all named for him. Crossing the Port Huron Bridge back into the US we made the acquaintance of a truckload of pigs. One friendly porker kept pushing his snout out the small hole in his area - quite a sight - I was laughing so hard at it that I could hardly talk on the cell when Phil Osborn called with directions. Going through customs that sweet young customs agent said we must be grandparents...and we couldn't figure out why she thought that until we remembered that we were escorting Fuzzy and SaksiePoo back to CA - for those of you who have not made the acquaintance of these outstanding boys, they are Lauren's stuffed bears. She has had a trio of bears that have accompanied here everywhere - MiniSaks being the last one - and she
reluctantly only took the latter on her adventure and entrusted the care of the former to us.
The evening was spent with another college sorority sister Alice McCann Osburn in Grosse Point Park, MI. It was wonderful to see Alice and Phil and share in the good news of their daughter Elizabeth's recent engagement. Alice is soon going to be following in my footsteps and retiring from a successful legal career at GM - she says this year has been crazy but wonderful to see all her colleagues at GM pulling together for the company. Alice is part of the reason I'm a librarian - she was a year ahead of me in college, went to library school when she graduated and encouraged me to do the same.
Now we're off to our first presidential library of this road trip tomorrow...
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Lauren
non-member comment
take good care of my bears!!!!