We leave Friday morning for Michigan. We're planning three nights on the road (we used to do it in two). We need to see my wife's sister. She's a year younger than her and she's suffering from dementia. Her family has had to put her in a 'memory home'. The first couple of months were pretty bad, but they got her some medication that has gotten her behavior under control (there's not much that they can do for the dementia). For the last month or so she's been able to take three and four day furloughs with one of her kids (there are three who live within 20 miles). So we're going to stay at her house with her so that it feels as close to normal as possible, it's just that we have to be with her 24/7 and she can't get behind the wheel of a car. Note that my wife and her only share half of the same gene pool as they have the same mother but different fathers.
After that we're going to spend some time with our youngest son who lives a few hours north of where my wife's sister lives. Then we're going to spend a couple of nights with my cousin in our home town. She getting up there in years and she's my last first cousin on my mother's side.
Then it's up across the 'Big Mac' to the UP, and to Munising where we hope to catch the sunset cruise along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (we had tickets for this cruise last year but got rained out). Then Sunday morning we're meeting my brother and his wife and their daughter, who's visiting for the summer (she's retired from the Army) at their church for services and it just so happens that the church is having a cook-out and picnic on the shore of Lake Superior that day, so it was good timing on our part. And our granddaughter, who's going to school up at my alma mater, will be there as well, with her new boyfriend, as she attends church services every Sunday with my brother and his wife as they're only about 30 miles from the campus. Then we're staying overnight up in Houghton, where the school is located, and will take our granddaughter, and her boyfriend, out for dinner.
The next morning, Monday, we head south for Green Bay as we want to visit Our Lady of Champion Catholic Shrine, which is out toward Door County. My wife has been wanting to visit the shrine for some time as it's where there was an apparition of the Holy Mother . We'll probably attend Mass there before we finally start to head West toward home.
We plan to make a couple of stops along the way, including Wall Drug, Crazy Horse, Glenwood Canyon and perhaps Bryce Canyon, before arriving home on July 19th.
Last year we were on the road for 30 days. This year we're limiting it to 23 days. However, we have to be back in Texas the first week of November for granddaughter #2's wedding. And we still might squeeze in a trip up to Washington state to see my wife's brother and his family. While we saw his son and his family last year in Michigan when they were attending a relgious confernce (both the brother and his son are ministers) in Indiana, we haven't see my wife's brother or his wife since before Covid.
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