Hello from the lake! It has been such a long time since I have blogged and I apologize. Right now I am sitting in bed recovering from some evil bug that Banjo Man caught on one of our flights and passed on to me a week or so later.

I have been in bed for ten days. I have not been this sick since I had the flu in 1990. But I now have antibiotics (day 3) and am starting to perk up.

On May 12 we left RI and prepared for three flights to get us to Spokane. The first was to Nashville, a fun airport with lots of restaurants.

We were delayed in Nashville and then had to stress over whether we would miss our connecting flight from Denver to Spokane. Turned out there were fifteen of us wondering the same thing, so the Spokane flight was held for an hour. There was a mad dash to another terminal in Denver. We sort of did the “speed walk” thing while others ran past us.

I will not go into other grumpy travel details, but I will admit to yelling at a very rude old man at the hotel. It was 2 AM and we had been up for 21 hours. My patience and general good humor had disappeared while waiting almost an hour for the airport shuttle. Banjo Man tried not to laugh out loud and the hotel employee thanked me.

I was thrilled with myself and went to bed happy.

The next morning we went car shopping. Yes, car shopping. Banjo Man wanted me to have a very nice used (of course) Toyota Highlander so I would be totally independent these next five months. I did not want a very nice Highlander. I wanted an old one, one that could go to town, up and down the mountain and to local restaurants.

I won. The compromise? We would buy a newer model car back in RI. It is time for a car with all the safety features we need for all the trips to Boston and points north.

It was time for lunch. Banjo Man picked his favorite:

Because we are superhuman old folks, we then drove to Costco and purchased $800 worth of groceries.

Epic.

We each had our own cart. I fizzled out long before Banjo Man and found a spot by the protein powders where I could lean on the cart and close my eyes.

Onward to the lake…

It would be almost 7 PM before we pulled up in the driveway. There was water to turn on, septic system to start, hot water tanks to turn from ‘vacation’ mode to normal.

Heaven, heaven, heaven.