Dads Florida Trip 2

Going to get the RV rental with a van full of stuff for the trip
Bourbon Heaven

Rest Stop


Bourbon Barrels Smell Soooo Good


Great Rest Stop For The Night




Myrtle Beach

Cruising Myrtle Beach in a cart

Gary with TV. In each booth at THORNY'S

Not much time to write right now so I'll just post some pictures. Deb text me and said the oil is due to hit Pensacola tomorrow (Friday) and we will be there today (Thursday) so I guess we will be there to see it come in.

Friday June 4: Guess not.....Dad has had enough. After camping in an RV park in Tallahassee FL Thursday night he wanted to know how the road north is going. Well we were not going north but rather to the beach. Seems the camper noise and change in his routine was a bit much for him so after a bit of discussion I plotted a course back to Michigan. Using the great GPS I got for retirement from the guys at work I plotted a course to the Jim Beam Distillery (well it's on the way!!). We got withing 120 miles or so of Pensacola before the GPS sent us north......but what the heck, I see oil in my driveway all the time anyway.

Tonight we are in the Bluegrass Music RV Park in Kentucky. Nice place with a pool and laundry (better do some at least once on the trip) as well as wireless.

It has been a bit different trip than anyone figured. The first week with my brother Gary was essentially the trip, this is just a return leg now. Dad enjoys the stopping like I do when hiking "I don't hike for the hiking, I hike for the stopping" So I stop often and make less progress than I could. Get to a camp at about 4:30-5:00 for the Gin/Bourbon toast. Lately he is a one drink man before a nap comes over him. So it is "drinking lite" on the way back.

The trip does make me wonder though about the time when life starts to slip away one memory or one joint at a time. Perhaps it comes down to what he told me long ago at the kitchen table during many of our long discussions. "All I want to do is leave the world a little bit better place for having been in it". I know on this trip I don't look to all the cars he fixed or all the welds he made across the state of Michigan but rather I look at all the ways he made my life better off having him as my dad, regardless of where he thinks he is at any given moment. It was the early years, not now, that shaped my life. In the end, I think it always comes down to family and the very few others you can call family.

Due to arrive in Saginaw Sunday evening or Monday morning.

Saturday June 12: The trip back was made for a reason I guess. Saturday morning in Kentucky dad started saying he had a pain in his chest. Not a good sign especially since his first heart attack was 25 years ago...in Kentucky coming out to see me in California. So the choice along the road back was to duck into a hospital if the symptoms were bad (could be heart burn, gall bladder etc.) or keep going to get back to Saginaw where the doctors are that know all his history with his multiple conditions.

To make a very long story short we got back to Saginaw in two days from the onset of symptoms and I took him right to St. Mary's where my sister works.....an emergency crew was waiting. BP 220/118 and he did have a heart attack. He is home now at my sisters seemingly no worse off for the mild attack that it was with different meds than when we started........dodged a bullet on that one!!

Later