I was rereading my last post which was awhile ago and no, we did not get booted off the Home Depot lot during the night. In the morning we stopped in South Haven at a little farm market where we had bad coffees, bought produce, and gave a tour of the bus to a couple that was waiting next to it when we got back. We arrived to Dillon’s late in the afternoon the 17th, a fitting day since it was the 8th anniversary of Dad being gone.

We have been cooking good food, mowing, having garage sale, spoiling cute little Max Anthony, eating supper at Ross&Nats, and camping, among other things. We all went camping last weekend up north aways. We found a little campground on a lake so we fished and swam and kayaked. We took the bus and Dillon’s, Mom, and Madison were in tents or hammocks. One day it rained most of daylight hours so the bus got well used since we seven were inside, cooking and hanging out. It was such a relaxing weekend. Mom, Madison, and Dilly’s left for home Sunday evening, while Morgan and I drove the bus up over the Mackinac Bridge and into the U.P. to attend our first ever skoolie “festival”.

The fest was held at a specially reserved campground so we arrived there Sunday evening and got set up. When we arrive somewhere we have a 20 minute period where Morgan plugs in the bus, gets the bikes down, sets up the grey tank, and other little stuff. When we are driving, I use our kitchen sink to put all the things in that move around from our counters so when we arrive somewhere, I put our books back on the shelf, set out my plants, lay out our outdoor rug, and so on. After we’d set up, we took a bike ride out on a path surrounded by forests. Later we met our neighbors, a sweet family of four in a beautiful 40 foot bus next to ours, and then made spaghetti for supper and relaxed outside until the plague of mosquitoes drove us in. Monday we spent a good part of the day meeting new people from all over the country and getting to know them and occasionally touring their buses. We met some awesome people families and were impressed with the genius ideas we saw in other people’s bus builds. In the afternoon we rode bike to a lake somewhere out in the boonies that was quiet and sandy and warm.

We left the fest (sadly since it was going on all week) on Tuesday morning after a community breakfast and drove to St. Ignace where we stopped for coffees (we rated them 8.7/10, which is pretty high for us haha) and ended up meeting a really cool young couple who live on a boat off Florida somewhere most of the time. I hope all of you talk to strangers and meet new people because it’s so interesting.

We got home and promptly turned around and drove to Lansing with Dillon where we met the rest for supper and shopped Horrocks which is basically my only goal in life ever. Whilst eating, we found out via Randy that there were three spots available to go fishing in Frankfort so Morgan, Madison, and I snapped the spots up and as soon as we were home from Lansing, packed up an ice chest and drove up to Frankfort. We slept an hour in the vehicle and were on the dock at 5 am where we met Randy (MI) and Taylor and Greg (MS). We went with our favorite boat and captain and friend, Brian Murphy. He and Dad got to be close friends and we would consider him and his wife Christine, our family. They are wonderful people. We caught our limit of lake trout by 10 and stopped to say hello to Christine at their store, Frankfort Tackle Box, before we left town. We had a really great time with the guys! Also I got to see Joanie (wife of Taylor) who was my friend before basically everyone except Jerica, so that is also making me happy currently.

Last night we went to Ty&Alyssa for pizza, and today Morgan and I went to Grand Rapids to get taco meat and fixings for the MapleView Benefit that is this Saturday evening here in Michigan. We are doing street tacos and I hear there will be catfish, desserts, wings, etc. also so we think it will be a fun evening seeing people from here and away.