Road Trips

My VIP setup in the Backseat

This post marks my first official blogging experience in the state of Michigan. I arrived here on Saturday after a cross country driving adventure with both my parents in a pick-up truck. Luckily, we were blessed to at least have an extended cab so we weren't riding three deep the whole 27 hours. As you can imagine that sort of time in a car with two other people can be quite the experience and with my family you are basically guaranteed several laughs. One of these such laugh-inducing situations occurred after I took over driving about 10:30PM on Thursday night. My dad had been driving up to this point and so he decided to climb into the backseat to try and get some sleep. As you can tell from the picture to the right there wasn't a whole lot of room to work with. First, he spent a few minutes trying to rearrange bags and blankets to get comfortable all the while grumbling about the lack of space, while my mom and I teased him about his picky-ness. Not more than one minute after he finally got comfortable, he had the unfortunate experience of getting a cramp in his leg and was yelling and making all sorts of odd noises in the back seat trying to stretch it out which as you can imagine is quite impossible. My mother and I were none too supportive and could only manage to laugh through this entire experience. It may not seem funny to you reading this post, but let me tell you after 9 hours in a car and still 10 to go just about anything seems hilarious.

Auntie Connie & Us

My parents decided that since we were heading out to the Midwest that they might as well extend our trip out to Wisconsin to visit some family. So for the first leg of our trip we drove straight through the night from our house to Madison, WI. While in Wisconsin we were able to visit with my Dad's cousin, Ralph, and his family and to go and visit my elderly great aunt who recently moved out there where she could be better cared for. It was wonderful being able to see all of them and visit for even a short time. And from what I understand the mere 7 hours separating Michigan from Wisconsin basically makes us neighbors in the Midwest so I'm sure there will be many more visits to come. 


After spending Friday in Wisconsin, we got up Saturday morning and began our drive to Okemos, MI - my new home. We unfortunately ran into some terrible traffic so the drive took a little longer than anticipated, but we arrived at the house after about an 8 hour drive. We spent the weekend together, doing a little sight-seeing, a good deal of visiting, and lots of relaxing. My parents headed back to Rhode Island early Tuesday morning and from what I hear that was a whole other adventure, involving accidentally ending up in Canada, but you'll have to talk to one of them about that.

So this is the beginning of my new adventure - my move to the Midwest and the beginning (hopefully soon) of my nursing career. It may not be as exciting or ridiculous as my life in Kentucky was, but I hope to continue updating all of you on my life via this blog. Who knows maybe Charlie the Mountain Man has a twin in Michigan?