REUNION OF THE COASTIES FROM THE "MIGHTY MAC"

We arrived home from a wonderful week-end reunion of the former crew of the USCGC 83, the Mackinaw, or better known as the "Mighty Mac". Old friends gathered to remember stories and swap lies. Smiles were everywhere. This picture of the Mighty Mac might not look familiar to most of you, even as a Coast Guard ship...and that's because the Mighty Mac was origonally totally white, not even the red stripe, so that it was less visible from the air. Remember...it was launched in 1944, during WWII. Note: it was launched the year that Chris was born....AND....it was also "born" in Toledo, OH. Most of the old "Coasties" want the Mighty Mac painted white, as most of them remember it. We understand that it will be re-painted white when, in 3 years when it is finally turned over to the Maritime Museum Mackinaw committee.

I love this picture of Chris. He has such a nice smile. Lots of smiles over the week end.

This interesting gentleman was not a "plank" (i.e. a member of the very first crew of the Mac), but he was on it 6 mo. after it was launched. It was such fun listening to him talk about it.

A meeting of old friends. They sure had some wild times together...because I heard it all!

A picture not often seen....from below the Mackinaw Bridge. The guys said that they saw this view lots of times (as they came into port and left port)...no big deal. But we actually got to "hang out" under the huge bridge for about 1/2 hour on our cruise ont he Sheppler Ferry. It was lots of fun.

A view from the "troll"....who lives under the bridge, right?

A view of the "baby Mac"....the new Mackinaw icebreaker, in its home port in Cheboygan (where the Might Mac spent 63 years). We were going to have a tour on it, as many of the old crew did, but for some reason the gate to the base was closed when we went. Chris' reputation must have preceeded him????

After the festivities, we went to visit some old friends of Chris from his Coast Guard days. (he served with this guy's brother-in-law and got to know the whole family) This is Wayne Maltby giving me a ride on his jet ski. He lives right on the Black River outside of Cheboygan. What fun. I did such a fantastic job getting on and off of the jet ski....dumped it both times! :-)

And here's Chris cruising by....his first time ever on a jet ski.

And this is sunset ont he Straits of Mackinaw, where we camped for the week end. Such beauty in the north country....

"Say YES to Michigan!"

A month or so ago, Andrea & I "cooked up" the idea to go see the retired icebreaker Mackinaw, which is now a maritime museum docked in Mackinaw City, MI. This is the icebreaker that Chris was stationed on in the 60's while he was in the Coast Guard, and perhaps more noteably :-) was commissioned the year he was born! So, we co-ordinated and packed and re-packed to get everything into our camper and headed north on June 11th, last Thursday. It was tight but good-natured in our truck. Little Charolette was a wonderful traveler....and she kept us smiling as she knew how to stop the truck! when she said she had to go "pee pee"....and it worked! We had a wonderful campground that Chris and I had stayed at before....The Tee Pee Campground in Mackinaw City. The wonderful thing about this place was that our camp sight was right on the shore of Lake Huron and in clear view of the modern marvel that is the third longest suspension bridge in the world ....the 5 mi. long "Mighty Mac" Mackinac Bridge.Since David had never been north of Lansing, MI, one of the important things for us to do on this trip north was to cross the bridge to St. Ignace in the "UP"....the Upper Penninsula of MI....home of the "yuupers".

Of course the above is the traditional "we were there" picture of the group.

Of course I was "shutter bugging".

Charolette was the best trooper in the world when we literally drug her all over Macinac Island. She always smiled and kept on going. Above we are on the ferry to the island and she is enjoying the water. She called the ferry the "water bus".

Believe it or not....here's the proof....I biked around the entire island. Wasn't cute....but I did it! I was proud of myself since I had not been on a bike for 50 years!

After watching fudge being made, taking loads of pictures, and doing a little shopping...I became officially a "fudgie"....i.e. a tourist with a camera around their neck, and fudge in the hand.

Our other destination on this trip was the maritime museum, Mackinaw. It was lots of fun. Since Chris was crew, the folks at the museum offered that if there was anything that was not on the tour, and he wanted his family to see, they would be glad to show that area to him. In other words, he could go anywhere on the ship. He was looking for some obscure place in the deepest forward area....and the docent wanted to find it too....he said there was a camera there that was functioning, but he had not been able to find the room. So off they all went....up ladders, down ladders, through port holes....finally comming across some old maps of the ship. And they figured out where it was! Chris' only problem with finding it was that walls had been moved, port holes had been changed over the years....but they succeeded!

Here was Chris returning from one of the unsuccessful attempts to find the forward engine room.

Around the camp fire was lots of fun. We were only steps away from the shore, the play ground and lots of fun. Charolette was so ready for anything. Here she is amazed at sparklers....

She loved being on top of the world ont he slide and saying "Hi!"....and then "Wheeeee" on the way down.

At dusk we often went down to the shore and looked at whatever. One thing for sure was that she didn't want to miss anything and didn't want to go to bed...

Our last morning there, Andrea and David took some bread sticks to the shore to feed the sea gulls. It was almost like a scene from "The Birds"....They really flocked to her.

This was only one of the beautiful sunsets that we saw. God certainly had his color palat out those nights.

And Charolette finally crashed on the last evening before midnight.....at about 8:30....only because mommy zipped her inside the tent. It took her about 10 minutes....and she was out. It had been a long day for her....and for all of us.

The Old Man River....He Just Keeps Rolling Along...

We have arrived home, but the last three days of our Branson trip has not presented the opportunity to blog, although I had the pictures all ready to go up. When Thursday dawned, we were ready to head north. We had a wonderful fairy-tale time in Branson: eating at wonderful restaurants, watchig creative and fascinating Las Vegas type shows, and enjoying going through some of the craft shops. But we were ready to "get out of Dodge". Heading north to Springfield, MO, we spent the morning going through the biggest Bass Pro Shop I ever saw....indeed: it was the Granddaddy of them all....the first one. Then we began our usual way of traveling....trying to stay off of the freeways and going on secondary roads. Strangely, we found absolutely no campgrounds on this leg of the trip. So, we turned off toward Lousiana.....yes, Louisana, ....Missouri. There we spent the night in "Camp Wal Mart" and then left for 30 miles up to Hannibal, Missouri. Both of these delightful, quaint and historic towns are on the wonderful Mississippi River. I thought this picture really showed the majesty and meandering of the River. Now, these next couple of pictures are in reverse of the cronological order: we came to Lousiana, toured and spent time there, then saw that Hannibal was just 30 miles away, up river. So we traveled along the majestic river and was able to get the beautiful picture above.

Hannibal, Missouri, you must all recall from your high school days, is the boyhood home of Samual Longhorn Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain. We saw his home, the office of his father, the home of his girlfriend, Maggie Thatcher, and on and on.

On a river boat, was where Samuel Clemmens became a river boat pilot. We didn't take a ride on this one...because there were 100's of kids in town....the place was over run by them! We learned that Fridays were good field trip days....oh rats!

Quaint down town Hannibal, with 200 year old buildings. It was nice that many of them had little historical placks on the front of them so that you knew the buildings "heritage".

Of course, no walking tour would be complete without the fence that Tom Sawyer persueded his gang to pay him for the "privilege" of whitewashing. Mark Twain set most of his Tom Sawyer's adventures in the life and town that he was familiar with.

Just down river from Hannibal was Louisiana, Missouri. One town resident we chatted with for a while called it "poverty central"....and it truly was not on the road to anywhere. But one of the big reasons of staying off of the beaten path, we were able to see the wonderful murals that were painted on 20 of the buildings in town.....this eagle was one of the murals. What unsung artists...

These following pictures I just took because they were pretty. We did get to enjoy spring foliage along our trip. We left Waterloo with no flowers out....saw things progressively become greener as we went south. Saw the forests where dogwood grew wild and beautiful trees were in bloom.

The beautiful fully bloomed dog wood flower.....waited a full week to get close up to one of these.

Aaaaah.....the beautifes of God's world. We stopped off in Chicago just in time for Charlie's 5th birthday, and in time to see Kevin's new "toy" car; then off to Granger, IN to visit with the "presidents": Madison, Lincoln, Reagan, and Kennedy. We picked up grandson #1, Justin, to bring him to Waterloo for a friend's funeral.

Tonight Chris and I are beginning our "recuperation"....tee hee.....doing the tons of wash, cleaning out the camper, fixing a couple of things on it....and to start planning for our next adventure.....

Big Music; Small Town Atmosphere

After the "nothing can top this" performance with Yakoff Schmirnoff on Wednesday morning, we decided to just knock around Branson a bit, had a wonderful lunch salad at Ruby Tuesday, did a bit of shopping in a craft mall, did some wine tasting :-) and then saw the Branson Mall. This was the same place we watched the ten little kds adopted from Guatamala singing last Sunday. There are free shows there all day. There was a "cowboy" outside singing and advertising the acts....Elvis was there at 4 p.m. Thought this might be a fun thing to watch. We had front row seats at a table beside the cat walk.....and here was Elvis. He actually looked a bit like Elvis, but wasn't an impersonator....just singing his songs and giving a little history of Elvis mixed in. Felt sorry for him up there in those leathers....he was dripping wet.

...and more....

and more....

We spent a couple of hours listening to him. He was very good. Of course nobody actually beats Elvis' voice. There were tip vases on the table. This was how they get paid. There was a gal on the other side of the cat walk who was hooting and hollering like a teen-ager did 40 yrs ago was performing. ...and she was NO 16 yr. old believe me.....

This was the singer who was finishing up as we got there for Elvis' performance. He was a very good Christian singer. Really enjoyable.

This little town is very Christian and patriotic. Every show honors vets in some way. This guy really professed Christ. We have even saw one guitar holding dude standing on the corner reading the Bible really loud.

On Thursday we head up to Springfield, MO to the biggest grandaddy Bass Pro Shop of them all. Too bad we don't have Charlie here to explore all the boats.

So until we're on the road and "connect" again....

Yakov Schmirnoff....A LAUGH A MINUTE!

Chris and I were up and did our workout in the Radisson exercise room....then got ready for our morning show with Yakov Schmirnoff. He was so wonderful, funny and, yes, inspirational. He came to this country with his parents in 1976 to New York, in 1986 became an American citizen, all the while holding a statue of the Statue of Liberty on his lap. He was sworn in on Ellis Island by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger. He had been an art teacher in Russia. He is so profoundly proud of being an American. This is a self portrait of himself.

This is a huge painting with his quote, some of you may recall, hung about 18 floors tall next to Ground Zero on the first anniversary if 9-11. He spent $100,000 of his own money to get it up there. He didn't have his name attached; it was done annonimously. He didn't want anyone to think that he was doing it for monitary gain. Paul Harvey finally let the cat out of the bag. (pssst....that little square on the statue of liberty is not part of the painting; they had small parts magnified hugely on the walls of his theatre.)

I had to take any pictures from a great distance and with no flash; so pics are not the best. He was in this when all of his Cosak dancers were doing their thing.

Here one of his skits involved being president...if he could be if he were not foreign born. He took questions from the audience as if in a press confirence. He was asked the usual about economy, etc, and had us rolling in the isles. He was asked about the white house dog: he said it would be a shitzu and a poodle...and be a shit-poo; asked if he wore boxers or briefs: he answered "I wear English Leather, or nothing at all..." (even he rolled with that one)

When he got to the end of the whole show he was so unabashedly proud to be an American and was very encouraging to everyone to be kind to each other. (He got his masters in Psychology a couple of years ago.) Tears were rolling down his cheeks as he told about the 80 year old landlord in his apartment the night his parents and he came to New York. She knocked on his door at the night (and it wasn't the KGB!) and she had everybody in the apartment behind her bringing gifts, food, furniture, etc. Everything that these new immigrants needed. He never forgot that....and was very moved when he told about it.

Then this little treat waited for each lady in the rest room....had a little ditty about putting down the curtain and he won't look or something like that.... :)

Then this hung above the toilet paper dispenser.

It was a fun morning....and once again, the audience was probably 90% over 6o yrs. of age.....

I'll post the rest of the fun from today by tomorrow morning....then we pack up and head out of town.

So, until we connect again....

Stars, Stars, Stars!

Wow, Tuesday was a star-studded day.

Trying to describe Branson to someone who has not seen it: it is like Vegas, only more spread out; no gambling but all the glitz of the shows and shopping.

After we went through our obligatory presentation about the Blue Green Resorts....which are awesome....but we escaped unscathed! we went on to our lunch, then the afternoon show....see the logo below...wonderful impersonators. I was able to take pictures with no flash....and got some fairly descent pics.

This was Alan Jackson....he had me fooled! I thought that he was just the opener for the impersonators....and it was really him....but ah, no....not him....

This gal....for Tina Turner....was awesome. Don't think she was quite as high energy as the real thing....but nevertheless, very good.

Never listened much to Rod Stewart until yesterday...he was really good.

These Blues Brother's I thought were awesome. I can see why Justin likes them.

Now, Elvis was really not quite as good as the rest of the impersonators.... and probably because moi' is an Elvis oficianado....But, he was fun to listen to.

Now, as far as I'm concerned these guys were the high point of the whole week. They were so ver awesome. Loved every minute. We looked around at their personal theatre....saw it pretty well full. Last night was the first night of their 2009 season and they will only be here this time for 4 days. Looking at the faces....95% if the fans were 60 and older!!! Of course, the Oaks have been singing to the same people for 30 years....cuz they are the same age as their audience!

It was lots of fun to watch these guys. The guy on the right is that fabuloulous base.

We had a super time and enjoyed every minute.