2020: THE NEXT BIG TRIP

All this past winter, Debbie pined for the motorhome which was tucked away securely in storage

waiting for the Next Big Trip which we wanted to start the day after her tax-preparation job was complete on April 15^th. She and John had agreed to a two year trial run in the big bus, this time to the East Coast. She had signed us up for a “guided tour” package as part of our Back East experience. We were to spend ten days in the Washington DC area, the highlight of which would be the Smithsonian Institute.

We'd each grown up in within a half day's drive of the Smithsonian, but somehow never got there, although we both did see the '65 World's Fair, many Revolutionary- and Civil War battlefields, Constitution Hall, more Washington Slept Here places than you can shake a stick at, NYC and Philly and vacations in most of the coastal states with our families. After DC, we had planned to head to Virginia to visit one of her old–– that is, erstwhile girlfriends, then her other brother in North Carolina, and John's sister in New Jersey, winding up with a hoped-for tour of the Hershey plant in Pennsylvania which John remembers dimly from a family trip when he was maybe ten. We know the company is still in business, but sixty years is a long time between tours and maybe they don't give 'em anymore?

Anyway, plans were set in motion and then Covid happened. In the Political Pandemic that ensued, most of the East Coast pulled in the sidewalks... and just you try to visit Washington! Please see the footnote for our restrained condemnation of the Panic.   Or not.   If you've already drunk that particular flavor of Kool-Aid, we'll probably just arouse your anger.

With the feds extending the tax season to Mid-July, Deb's job continued to pay her (bonus!) and our coach remained in storage (boo!). Meanwhile, the Fantasy Tours people offered some alternatives to the Smithsonian, and we settled on one comfortably out West and many, many months distant, where/when we thought the Extreme Coast politicians would not be panicking. Silly us! New Mexico Covid'd out its Balloon Fest, too! And it doesn't even happen till October yet! We're convinced more coercion that rational thought went into that decision.

When our Governor decided the pressure against keeping the Michigan state parks closed was indefensible, we ended up taking a long weekend to the Hoffmaster State Park with friends and kids (we recognized them as ours because they didn't wear masks, either, being intelligent and educated) just to make sure the thing still worked.

We also put the first cork in Steven's Christmas gift to our coach.

The third cork went in forty minutes later. We weren't the only ones drinking.

Then we called our siblings and Debbie's friend Dianna to discuss 2021 –fingers crossed!  For this year, though, we hear South Dakota still is an American state . And, gee, it's been since the 1990's that we've seen the Badlands. Maybe we'll get there. We were thinking of visiting Colorado because we blew it off for our spring trip in '19 due to being too early and their roads still having snow in April. But then forest fires happened this August. Ahhhh, geez! as Archie Bunker used to say.

So we headed north at the end of August, after Debbie substituted a week of maskless bike riding in northern Michigan with her two-wheeler girlfriends for the Covid-canceled Shoreline West Tour to the tip of the mitt that she takes each year. The general plan is to visit our son in Traverse City, head across the UP, Wisconsin, and into Minnesota where a neighbor lauds the scenery (and suggests we avoid the wrong-headed looters and property destroyers in police-defunded Minneapolis with its new "holistic" approach to public safety). From there we'll go West and turn left somewhere before or after the Rockies but without the hope of making Bugs Bunny's mistaken turn at Albuquerque. We have every intent of arriving at home just before the November election so we can cast our one ballot each.

One final note: our first Bry RV Name That Mascot contest.

Last summer, in Oregon, Debbie was backing the coach by herself (without anyone spotting from behind) and thought she had stopped before hitting the white fence. The splotch on the left rear reminds us both to have external guidance. Over the winter, we see that the splotch has developed a definite character. John believes it's sort of penguiny although a bit more like a Puffin, and reminds him of Opus from the Berke Breathed art in the Bloom County comics of the last millennium. Freely comment with your suggestions.

If you wish, please continue to join us here on BRY RV. We'll try to minimize acerbic political comment. Maybe.

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We here in West Michigan keep trying to see the sense of it, neither of us knowing anyone who's even caught Covid, although we know of some people who worry about it mightily because they evidently watch too much TV and believe the mythical reports of people dying in droves. Educated reporters are a very, very rare thing these days. Debbie and John frequent the federal and state health websites and read their data, use our education, and scratch our heads but cannot get the dire sense of doom that Michigan's Governor evidently had been directed to. Her ever more seemingly panicked unbalanced and unchecked Executive Orders continue to bloom headed into the fall while our elected representatives sit on their side of the Constitutions' see-saw sucking their thumbs, continuing to pay themselves with our money while not doing a damn thing about the Governor Who Wants To Be Vice President But Was Born The Wrong Color. Even using the state government's intentionally Covid-bloated database, we cannot agree with her Administration's assessment that anyone attacked by the virus is “lucky to survive.” Just more than one percent of Michiganders have been infected and, of those, more than 94% did not die (pretty good odds, yes?). However, ten million people live in our state, so use your arithmetic to find that the survivors who were infected and those who never ever caught it comprise 99.999% of those millions. And, no, we're not all wearing masks in spite of her claims to rule her “protection” over us.

p.s.: Gretchen Whitmer ordered that school kids may, indeed, play some sports this fall but they must wear a mask while on the field! The state's polluted database shows that not even one person under the age of twenty has died of/with/about/near Covid.  Explain yourself, Whitmer! 

p.p.s.: She did make exception for swimmers –while in the water.

{That strangled noise is us trying not to laugh derisively.}