Dear Friends,
How lovely to have heard from so many of you. So nice to know you are all still there "keeping the home fires burning" as it were. And most of you actually seem to be enjoying our little email updates. That's very heartwarming (and right now, very toe warming as well).
We understand that summer has finally arrived in Nelson. We are very happy for all of you. We are playing in gorgeous snow here in WISCONSIN. Dairy capital of America (or as the puppet says "Ah-Murr-Kah" you know the puppet - he lives in D. C. ------- I have to choose my words VERY carefully here. Many of you may not know, but I was an elected official in the current ruling party back in the early 90's. VERY long story.)
So, since our last communique we have toured through: Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois (remember there is no noise in Illinois!-- school pronunciation ditty I thought ya'll might appreciate!), Indiana, Michigan, and last but not least, here to Wisconsin. This has all been great for me. I'd never been to Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana or Wisconsin before. I haven't seen Chicago for years (eventually we'll actually get to stop and visit it - its quite buried in snow right now and with their winds it would be much colder there than here right now.) I just got to drive through it - see skyline photos.
But we started these last several trips back in Laredo a little over a week ago. It was hot and humid there. On our way up through Texas a nasty storm front was just coming through. We missed most of it but we did pass by an area hit by a small tornado. Amazing!! We've included photos. You can see the corrugated roofing from the one building hit draped and wrapped around things as though it was just fabric. It rained very hard during that drive. We saw several minor accidents. One photo I so desperately wish we had been able to get was where a semi truck and trailer had lost control somehow on the highway access road just in front of an overpass bridge and ran the entire unit up the steep hill to the right of the bridge right into the guard rail of the over pass highway - and there it sat with quite a crowd around it wondering how to extract it. The truck incurred only minor damage and the driver wasn't hurt but Murray told me he thought he saw the guy go into Walmarts to buy new underwear. It was very funny - much funnier (Bruce) than anything I'VE ever done with a vehicle! (Well there was that time I nearly rolled my Volvo in Houston. Now THAT WAS funny.)
The hill country of Tennessee and Kentucky is just beautiful. We actually drove through a gorge that cut right though the Smoky Mountains. That was very picturesque. Mother took us there once when we were quite young. Somewhere we have a photo of my brother following a bear down a Kentucky roadway. I think he was trying to feed it. Luckily the bear ignored my brother. Otherwise he might have been featured in one of those "WHEN ANIMALS GO WILD" documentaries as a statistic, or a snack or something.
The Great Lakes are soo blue and soooo huge!! We drove to a little island called Grosse Ile, Michigan. It was lovely. It is actually a small island just off the coast of Michigan. We drove over a bridge that looked out toward some old wooden docks with moorings of several very old fashioned looking fishing boats and sailing vessels. Looked rather "Martha's Vineyard-ish". And the dairy farms here in Wisconsin look like Christmas cards. They all seem to have deep red barns and out buildings with the stereotypical arched and pointed roofs and a couple of grain silos. And they're all covered in snow. Just makes me want to start singing carols. I tried so hard to get a good photo of one of them but I had the camera setting wrong. We've included a photo here - but not a good one.
So, tomorrow we're off to Pennsylvania. (Home of Hershey's for all you chocolaholics.) And in just ten days we fly back to Auckland for Murray's son's wedding. We will spend a few days there and on the way back we'll spend a few days in San Francisco.
Last but not least, for any of you concerned that Murray and I were not able to attend any kind of church services while we are on the road, I've included a photo I took at a truck stop where we stayed a few days. Just to demonstrate how easy it truly is to "find Jesus" even on the road. Jesus! - I think that's a town in Mexico somewhere, let me just look that up in my magic map right here. . . . . .
Stay tuned to this station. There's always more.
Warmly (very warmly here in the truck right now!),
Margot and Murray
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Non club trips 
