Friday night, Tom picked me up at work in the Westy and we headed east! Our first stopover was Detroit. Running a little later than expected, we called Uncle Dave and Aunt Denise, who happen to live just outside Detroit. Uncle Dave must have thought we were joking when we asked to camp in his driveway, because he sure was surprised to see our big green bus the next morning! After a yummy chocolate croissant breakfast we headed to Henry Ford Village to see Tom's Grandfather.
Grandfather is 95 years old, but as quick as ever. We had a great time visiting and hearing stories about his time in the war and about his travels with Tom's Grammie after they were retired. Grandfather guessed that they took 2-3 trips a year overseas! They traveled to New Zealand and Nepal on two separate trips. One fantastic story from Nepal was when they had only a few hours before their international flight left, but Grammie really wanted to take a helicopter ride to see Everest. She finally convinced Grandfather to go and they made it back JUST in time for their flight home. If you know Tom, you can tell where he got his adventurous spirit (and airport arrival habits!). The photo on the right is a scan from Grammie's journal of their trip to Nepal, which Nancy (Tom's mother) gave us for Christmas.
After taking Grandfather out to lunch and saying our goodbyes, we headed to Greenfield Village where Tom's Uncle Dave was playing in an old-time baseball game. He plays for the Northville Eclipse team in a historic baseball league. The Eclipse played hard against the Greenfield Village Lah-Dee-Dahs, but unfortunately lost the game. It was so much fun to see them play by the 1860s rules (including gentlemanly conduct and no gloves!). Check out the team website and photo here. After touring Greenfield Village, we hit the road again.
Our second night was in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which was beautiful, but without campgrounds. We ended up parking on the street next to a public park and awoke to a gorgeous sunrise over the lake. We had a great breakfast in town (Canadians are SO friendly, a woman even gave Tom $2 to buy a newspaper because he didn't have change!) and headed to check out the falls. The Canadian falls are amazing. The view from that side is arguably better than from the US side because you are looking straight into the horseshoe. Driving out of town, we stumbled across a war reenactment camp at Fort George! We started wandering around, but then realized that we were actually right in the midst of the camp and the spectator area wasn't up yet.
Then it was back on the road and into the US again, headed for Indian Lake, NY!