Big Day in Our Family

October 19, 2015 in Ditto

Today our granddaughter Ellen is 2. What a great age. She spent the weekend with Brandon, Hermione and Lauren in St. Mary’s, playing on a slide and going through a corn maze. I cannot imagine a better way for a little girl to spend a birthday!

We are at Ditto Landing on the Tennessee River, just south of Huntsville. It is the midway point of the Tennessee River, but we are not doing the whole river. It is very cold, about 43° when I got up this morning. It’s even colder in Connecticut (where Jena is on business) and in Chicago (where Brian is at a convention). We have now lived on our boat about as long as we have lived in our new house in Connecticut. How weird is that? We’ve traveled about 3,000 miles in 4-1/2 months, making us about halfway through the trip in half of the allotted time, so we seem to be right on target. 

Brian is in Chicago for a few days at an investment symposium. Our friends on the Melinda B are “friend-sitting” me while he’s gone. Today we’re going to the Huntsville Space Museum which is best know for "space camp" and having supper with another Looper boat that we met in Milwaukee. We've all agreed that we don’t want any more fried fish. Tomorrow we’ll stock up on groceries, get Brian from the airport, and be ready to depart first thing Wednesday morning. Yesterday I oiled the floors and defrosted the refrigerator, so we are quite ready for five more weeks of travel. Then Thanksgiving and home for the Winter.

Yesterday Nelson showed up in El Paso to surprise my mother. On Saturday Brianna’s organization, The Hunger Project, had their big annual “Gala” and she sounded very pleased with the results. 

I am continuing my efforts to read the classics. In the spirit of travel novels, I have finished “Robinson Crusoe” and the "Swiss Family Robinson”, plus “The Martian” which is not a classic yet but is certainly a travel book! I’m also reading some river books like “Huckleberry Finn” and now “The Boys in the Boat”. Unfortunately, they do not put me to sleep like they are supposed to in the middle of the night. 

That’s about it. In some ways, our life on the rivers is similar to our lives at home, but of course in many ways it is completely different. I will have to think about this.