Travels with TIGER

I kind of dropped off the earth with my travel "blogging," didn't I? I don't have any excuse. It just happened! We weren't even through with our travels! I'll try to do better. That's all I'll promise!

After the amazing storm in Florence, we headed on toward Eagle River. Since we had planned to stay one more day in Florence, we had to improvise and went to Arbor Vitae for one night (it was good; I wouldn't mind going back there) and then to Eagle River KOA where we got to do some canoeing. Then we headed for home and a brief stop in Beloit before we hit the road again.

We next took a trip to Baraboo, Door County, and DePere (back to Apple Creek). That was another good ten days. (I'm giving the short form of the story but it was just ten good days of camping. Nothing was extraordinary except we had a great time. But that was typical for our summer!) All in all, we were on the road for some 40 days this past summer. That was enough to whet our appetite for more travel NEXT summer. We'll probably go west for the big trip and spend time in WI again, this time in the northwestern part of the state.

With that last trip, however, we returned home so Mary could get ready for the beginning of the school year. We did get in a couple of weekend trips in to Baraboo before putting the coach away for the winter.

However, now I'm on a new journey with a new companion, TIGER. A little background: our dear kitty Sally died in September. She had traveled with us all summer, adjusting to life on the road pretty well. She was real laid back and since she was getting a little old (aren't we all!) the confined life didn't seem too bad (she didn't get outside back home in the sticks-n-bricks either). Maybe the illness that took her from us was already at work and she just covered it up. Cats do that, you know. We do miss her something fierce!

We're not ready for a new cat member of the family right now, so Mary suggested (and I thought it was a neat idea) that we take TIGER, a stuffed animal from the World Wildlife Fund (1998 [!] was the "Year for the Tiger" for the WWF and TIGER comes from that era) and pose TIGER in various places showing the places where we are traveling. We could take pictures and then make prints of them and send them to our grandchildren as a way of letting them know where Grandma and Grandpa were when they were on the road.

Well, this time I'm not traveling in the motorhome. I'm driving our new car (2010 Honda Fit Sport) down to Tennessee to visit Mother for a few days. I'll meet Ransom (my brother, for those who don't know him) and we'll have most of a week with Mother.  So TIGER started today on the dash of the Fit as we were leaving home in Beloit (although he did move to the comfort and safety of the passenger seat for the trip). And now he has a comfortable bed for the night at our temporary home in Marion, IL. (He's got a bed of his own!)

And as we travel, I'll try to keep you posted. This doesn't have quite the excitement of our summer travels, but it gives me a change to practice the discipline of writing, which I really need to improve on for our summer travels to come AND for the writing I am trying to do in two other places:

"Hope for Tomorrow ... TODAY!" at http://fsclark.wordpress.com, where I'll be writing about coaching, conciliation, and consulting, and

"A Circuit Rider on the Internet," http://fsclark47.wordpress.com, where I'll be sharing my reflections as a retired but not retiring United Methodist clergy person.

Be seeing you down the road!

--forrest