When I shut down the bus yesterday I forgot to shut off the air supply to the engine accessories and turn off the chassis batteries, so I did that as soon as I got up this morning. I then made coffee and we had our usual juice and homemade granola. After breakfast Linda went shopping and I went to Lowe’s. She picked up a lot of fresh vegetables at the Howell Farmers Market and finished up at Meijer’s. I bought a 4-piece screw extractor set and then stopped at O’Reilly’s and bought two gallons of 50/50 pre-mixed universal antifreeze to top up the Aqua-Hot in our bus. I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea and had them roast a pound of Sumatra Mandheling beans. We have not tried these before but Mary thought we would like them. They are not decaffeinated, but we try to keep a regular coffee bean on hand for company, after dinner, or when we want (need) the high octane in the morning.
Linda had been in contact with our friend Mara for the last few weeks so we knew that she might stop here on her way to the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Late last week she confirmed that she would be here on Sunday so after our morning errands we turned our attention to getting ready for her arrival. She lives/travels in a Fleetwood Bounder (Class A motorhome). We saw it in Quartzsite, so we knew it was somewhere between 35 and 40 feet in length and that she does not tow a car behind it. Yesterday we moved our bus so she could park on the level pad with easy access to our 50 Amp electrical hookup. I cleaned up the coaxial cables that I had spread out all over the rec room floor and Linda vacuumed the carpets and wood floors and cleaned the bathrooms. We keep a clean house but it is not always tidy as we are involved in a lot of projects at the moment. But when company is coming we like things to a least start out tidy.
Mara was coming from Michigan City, Indiana so she only had 200 miles to travel. Most of it would have been on Interstate highways but she decided to detour over to Three Rivers, Michigan to visit a Latvian community located nearby. She finally arrived at our house around 2:30 PM. We met her in the street and I directed her into her parking spot.
It’s always exciting, and a bit intense, to meet up with an RV friend and that was certainly the case here. Mara had enjoyed her stop at the Latvian community even though she found them in church. We had last seen her in Quartzsite, Arizona in February. We had all had a lot of RV travel adventures since then, and it was also her first visit to our house, so we had lots to talk about.
Linda made bow-tie pasta with mushrooms, onions, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil pesto using basil that she grew on our back deck. We had a simple green salad and Italian bread with the meal and enjoyed 1-1/2 bottles of the 2013 Egri Merlot between the three of us. We sat on the deck enjoying the last of the wine until it cooled off and we went inside. By 9 PM we were all tired but we insisted that Mara stay for fresh sweet cherries. Rejuvenated by the cherries we all got our second wind and had a long conversation about RVs, cellular and Wi-Fi communications while traveling, and a cool routing app that Mara uses (MapMyPlaces). By 11 PM we were all tired for real and Mara returned to her rig for the night. It had been a long, but very satisfying, day for all of us.
