the rest of the weekend...

Made it home from Buffalo Saturday night. The trip back was nice, much better to travel in sunshine than in rain. Forgot to mention in the last post that, because we'd done all the rest of the way around in other trips, we've now completed the Lake Erie circle tour...now we only have Lake Ontario to complete and then we've done all five Great Lakes Circle tours! We didn't go to Niagara Falls. Realized thanks to the wonders of satellite map views that you don't get that full frontal view from the American side, plus we got a later start than we'd planned, so decided to just head for home. We did stop for three caches on the way - one just inside Pennsylvania and two in Ohio. We stopped in PA as one of the travelers I'd picked up on Friday wanted to go to a PA destination so didn't want to bring it back to Michigan when it was so close. The Ohio caches were in the same rest area, Steve was getting tired and I suggested a break - bonus that there were two caches there! Seriously, there was a nice paved nature trail and it did us all good to stretch our legs (Max included) and there was a nice view of the Vermillion River there as well. Yesterday we finally got to talk to Scott - he is still in Aviano but thinks he'll be home before we go to Germany (ONE MONTH FROM TOMORROW!!!!) Also, he says that if he still happens to be in Aviano (northeastern Italy) we could visit him there. We'll see what happens. After phone call, we headed over to Steve's dad's where we started the process of cleaning and packing, in prep for the remodeling/repair work as part of the "spend-down." I still fear Steve is going to want to save much more than we need to, but am choosing my battles, as I've said before. He has done some work in both the basement and garage to make room for things he'll bring from his dads. Plus, Eric is going to be moving in after the remodeling and be the official caretaker - still on his own but closer both to us and to his downtown GR nursing classes provided he makes it into the school of nursing this time. So some of what we move to our house might be able to be moved back.... It'll prove to be a busy week - with taxes due, more spend down, more clean up, not to mention both Roundtable and COAST. I think I need a vacation in about a month.....