2014/04/28 (M) Home Again

The wind blew overnight, but the rains held off.  We only had 80 miles to travel today so, other than wanting to break camp before the rain moved in, we were not in a hurry to leave Camp Turkeyville.  We set our sights on a 10 AM departure and by 9:30 AM we were busy with our departure routine.  It was trying to drizzle as I dumped the holding tanks but not really succeeding.  We had the bus and car prepped for travel by 10 AM and pulled out of the RV park around 10:15.

From exit 42 on I-69 we headed northeast towards Lansing, Michigan 38 miles distant.  We drove under overcast skies fighting strong, gusty winds, with just enough drizzle that I had to activate the wipers from time to time.  The bus is heavy and drives well, but it also has a lot of surface area, and I am very aware of strong, gusty side winds.

At the southwest corner of the Lansing area we picked up I-96 eastbound which took us around the southern edge of the city and put us our final course for home.  About 25 miles from our house we stopped at the Mobile Truck Stop at I-96 and M-52 and topped up the tank.  I prefer to have the tank full when the bus is going to sit for more than a few days, especially when overnight lows are going to dip into the 40’s or lower.

We decided to take the Grand River exit off of I-96 in Brighton rather than the slightly shorter route over M-59.  The Grand River route only had three stoplights, all within a short distance of the exit, and kept us on paved roads for all but the last mile of our drive.  The M-59 route would have had many more stoplights and put us on dirt roads for 2.5 miles.

We pulled into our driveway a little past noon.  We had stayed ahead of the rain, at least temporarily, and decided to unload as much of the coach as we could while the weather was in our favor.  The forecast for the rest of the week was for rain so we wanted to take advantage of this window while we had it.  It took a LOT of trips to get most of the stuff out if the house portion of the bus and into our fixed dwelling.  First off, however, were the cats.

Jasper and Juniper seemed a bit weary at first but quickly realized that this was a familiar place and started getting reacquainted with all the nooks and crannies.  Once we had most of our stuff inside the house we set about putting it away, or in the laundry room.  We went through mail, checked phone messages, made a few phone calls, and started making lists of things that we needed to do.  Although we will be here for the next half year or so we have quite a few major projects to work on and it already feels like we will be pressed for time to get them all done.  It was interesting to note that our transition back to a fixed dwelling was fairly abrupt, just like our snowbird departure was in December.

Late afternoon we linked up with our son, daughter-in-law, and younger grand-daughter via Facetime on one of our iPads.  There are advantages to being home and an Internet connection with lots of data is one of them.  After dinner I got our home computer network up and running and sent a few e-mails letting friends know we were finally home.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.