Visiting Romaine

Our first destination today was the People's Coop in Kalamazoo. We had found it on the web and went to the Burdick Street address where we expected to find it, but it had moved to Harrison Street (actually, the new address is on the website, but farther down). Fortunately, the new location was only a mile away--and much larger than the old one. The folks there were friendly and the selection good for a smaller town.

Next we went on to Allendale to visit Ken's sister Romaine, stopping along the way for diesel and to get some quick haircuts. The last time we were in this area was almost three years ago. We parked at the Farm and Home store near Romaine's and walked to her condo.

It was nice to see Romaine again and have a chance to sit and chat. She caught us up on what her kids are doing. We noticed her very comfortable chair is a Stressless--the same brand recommended by our friends Tim and Rosie. She says there's a furniture store in Grand Rapids that carries them, so we're planning to check them out.

We went to dinner at the Walker Roadhouse, which Romaine's daughter Julie had recommended. She also recommended the blackened salmon, which is what we ordered. It was delicious, and the server was very personable and professional. We enjoyed our dinner. Romaine was going to drive us through the campus of the Grand Valley State University, but the Campus Drive was closed and detoured, so we put that off for another time.

When we got back to Romaine's, we decided to walk around the neighborhood, which is very attractive. It has a large lake and a smaller lake. Romaine's condo backs up on the smaller lake. We walked all the way around the large lake, called the Village Lake, and admired the flowers and trees and water that make the area so appealing. When we got back to the house, we had dessert. Romaine had strawberries and ice cream, and we brought a strawberry jello pie. Combined they were very good.

Before we ate, Ken called Blue Lake County Park to see about our arrival tomorrow. He has talked to them a couple of days ago, and we expected to be able to get in with no problem. But this evening he was told that they had only two spots that would hold a rig our size--and three parties (of unknown size) arriving later. We made a decision to head out quickly, arriving at the park at 9:15 p.m. That's later than we would usually want to arrive, but sunset here today was 9:29, so we had barely enough time to set up before dark. It's lucky we arrived when we did. The site we got has 50 amp electric. The other possibility had only 20 amp available. We arrived before the other parties, but just barely....

We must have really bounced around on our trip today. More things than usual were knocked over. The worst was that the large padded cornice board and attached day/night shade and drapery over our picture window fell off the wall. Part of the board at one end broke off. The cornice board has had problems before. A couple of months ago, one end came loose, and we installed a plug to hold a screw in the ceiling. That gave way. This is the second one of these cornice boards to fall completely down.

Meanwhile, yesterday the hot water heater refused to work. It was not getting the water very hot on electric, and the gas burner wasn't coming on at all. Ken worked on it and cleaned the burner tube. The gas burner finally came on (score one for Ken!).