Oh yeah, now that I’m retaaared, I am no longer limited to choosing to drive north (or back) on a weekend day or taking a vacation day to do it during the week.

When COVID was “over” — but it really really wasn’t — the unwashed southeast Michigan masses returned to their weekend mass migrations to and from the yooperland and the northern lower. This was in 2021 and I had a brand new car (Cygnus X-1) and my first couple trips driving down on a Sunday were horrific. I have never been a timid driver but covid somehow knocked me down a bit on that. And, man oh man if I wanted to pass somebody slow, I could NOT get into the passing lane to save my life. One Sunday featured MANY motorcycles (there was a motor-sickle event in Iggy that weekend). The motorcycle riders were driving safely for the most part. Just too many vee-hickles on the road and most of them going way too fast.

The GG and Little Cat Z were driving tandem with me in Mooon Yooonit. I can’t remember the exact logistics of what we were doing but they were ahead of me and at some point the GG “panicked” because he couldn’t see me. He called (doo doo doo doo doooooo… cue the Twilight Zone). His ring tone always startles me, even though I assigned it to his contact on my phone. “What mile marker are you at?” He was at mile marker 180. “I’m at 180 too. Y’know, I don’t think I’m that far behind you. I just don’t think you can SEE me.”

Anyway, we drove up last Monday and came back home today. If you are a regular, you may have seen that our trip up was riddled with black ice, etc., and all kinds of “crazy cowboys” going too fast and sliding off the road. Or crashing into somebody else. Once up there, we had a bit more snow but we were mostly dealing with smaller low traffic roads, not the I75 SUV Speedway. Part of me wanted to stay another day but we have a speshul event tomorrow night and we wanted to make sure we were home in time to attend it. This winter, that could’ve been dicey but our drive home was smooth and dry.

It was a kind of a slow “weekend” (except it wasn’t a weekend) and, after a few years of not hanging out much at the cFam cabin at Hoton Lake, I am looking forward to more.

There’s plenty of snow up at the cFam cabin but (obviously) this big pile is from a plow.

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