Over the bridge and to the woods…

to grandmother’s house in rural Michigan we go! And so we arrived last night, Susanne tired from driving all day (yes, we’re splitting the driving duties), and me still not feeling like I’d really left home. Most of where we’ve gone I’ve been before, save the remarkable pit stop in Niagara. I wonder if the rest of the drive is going to feel different for me. Whenever I’ve made a transition of any kind, I’ve always had to look back to note when something significant shifted or when I started a new chapter, I never seem to capture the change mid-stream or as it happens. I wonder if that’s perhaps part of what transition is all about: you can know a change is coming, but in the midst of it, you’re too close to actually experience it, and it’s only after it’s over that you can contemplate what is now different in your life.
Susanne’s mom and dad threw us a very lovely wedding reception party for all of the Michigan folks who couldn’t make it out to the wedding last month (a mere 4 weeks ago, I’ll note). We had another very nice cake in our colors–light blue and chocolate brown–though I’m sad to say that the top of our actual wedding cake suffered a very sad fate in the car on the first few days of our trip. The ice we put in the cooler melted, of course, and the cake that I thought was wedged nicely in the cooler defrosted a bit, softened, and slid down to sit in the cold water. Totally ruined, unfortunately. So I’ll never get to actually eat the non-chocolate portion of the very lovely confection. It just wasn’t meant to be. I’ll have to order another one sometime when we’re in Baltimore!
We received some lovely cards from people today, and one hysterically funny present: two obnoxiously bright orange Almont Raiders t-shirts from the local high school. How wonderful that neon orange looks so flattering on us! Oh, wait.
I may take a bath in the jacuzzi tub here, and it occurs to me that we should have done a “hot tubs across America” theme. Maybe for our next trip.
Tomorrow we leave very early for a 12-hour stretch from Detroit to Minneapolis, then to a late supper with Susanne’s old St. Paul crew. I’ll have pictures of the past couple days when I update tomorrow night.