September 29th, 2023
After my stay near Rocky Mountain National Park, I returned to Kelly Dahl Campground near Nederland. This put me within a 50 minute drive of the hospital where I was scheduled for a Heart Ablation on September 13th. A “follow-up” appointment had also been scheduled for the 19th. If everything was alright, I planned to leave that appointment and head back across the plains to the Minneapolis area to visit with my mother. sister, and my skiing friends.
I left my trailer on the 12th and headed down to Lafayette for the heart procedure. They ran a CT scan and prepped me for anesthesia. When they woke me 3 hours later, I was instantly in a panic. I felt claustrophobic, trapped, and wanted out of there. It took 5 people to hold me down. Once I calmed down, they told me that my heart was in normal sinus rhythm. I stayed over night, and the next day, made the drive back up to my trailer. I was anxious to see whether I would feel out of breath again that evening. I did not. I felt fine and slept well for 11 hours.
A week later, with travel approved, I headed northeast on I-76 to North Platte, Nebraska where I turned north across the sand hills on the way to I-90 in South Dakota. In the afternoon of September 20th, I was back in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. On the 23rd, I went to my friends cabin on the Marengo River in northern Wisconsin. Fall colors were in full swing. The air was humid and rainy. Having grown up in northern Illinois, I had made many trips to the north woods of Wisconsin. I felt that I was back in familiar territory.
I spent a couple of days moving and stacking firewood with no ill effect, my heart still beating normally. On the 28th, I drive east on Highway 2 and entered Michigan an hour later at the town of Ironwood. I was back in the Eastern Time Zone.
After an overnight stay on Lake Superior near Au Train, my next destination was Straits State Park and the northern end of the Mackinac Bridge. I arrived at 3 p.m. and set up for 2 nights at the same site that I had stayed at 16 months earlier when I left lower Michigan.
On October 1st, I will cross the bridge and retrace my path down to Metamora State Park where my journey began on May 6th, 2022. I had not planned to drive back to Michigan for possibly years. But given the circumstances of the first 9 months of 2023, I felt the need to see my son in Oxford, Michigan and visit with some very good friends. There were times over those months when I was not sure I would ever see them again.
I could say that I will be returning home. But, Michigan never really felt like home even though I lived there for 26 years, the longest I lived anywhere. Loves Park, Illinois was home. It was where I grew up. There is, however, nothing there now. I have long ago lost track of childhood friends. My parents moved away. I suppose that my sons think of Oxford, Michigan as home. We moved there when they were toddlers.
By the middle of October, I will need to head south to visit with my cousin and to escape freezing temperatures with the trailer. After that, I will have to decide whether to cross the southern states toward Arizona for the winter, or winterize my trailer and go back to Minnesota to spend the winter with the trailer in storage.
Starting All Over 