The Visit...

Okay, before I even begin to tell you about my visit with my dear friend Michele, I apologize for not having taken any photos. I'm not sure what happened, but the time slipped away far too quickly and after she was gone I realized that I was left with no photos to share.

But, I do have some funny stories.

Michele moved to Houston 2 years ago, but her family is from Michigan and she has lived here in the Chicago area for the past 25 years or so.

She spent 8 days in Michigan with her family and then we drove out there to pick her up and bring her back to stay for a couple of days with us.

On our way back to Chicago, our navigation system gave us poor directions. Or perhaps it is simply because my darling husband (our driver) wasn't "listening" to the directions, but was only "looking" at them. Regardless, we made a wrong turn and ended up in (big gulp) Gary, Indiana. Let me tell you that this is NOT a town that you want to visit for any reason. Of course, the navigation system told us how to get back on the expressway - or attempted to. The first ramp was closed due to construction (which the system was not aware of). In it's attempt to recalculate and our attempt to get far far away from this town, we ended up...

entering a private property of a company, in an even scarier part of town than we were originally, going the wrong way down a one way street, and going up a ramp that was probably at one point an entrance to the expressway only to reach the top and discover that the bridge/ramp was no longer in existence. In other words, we almost took a dive - or a jump.

Thank goodness we all have a sense of humor because we were laughing hysterically through the entire situation (which by the way was the longest 20 minutes of our lives).

We finally managed to find our way back on to the expressway and out of Gary, but we will never forget that trip.

More about our visit to come...