August 1, 2012

One of my best friends, Martha, called yesterday around 7:30 pm to tell me she had taken her 97 year old mother, Nonnie, to the hospital -- she had pneumonia.  At 11:17 last night my phone rang and it was Martha’s daughter, Missy, calling.  I immediately knew something happened and answered the phone saying “Missy, what’s wrong”.  She told me that Nonnie had passed away.  Martha and her mother have lived together for as long as I have known them and in the past couple of years Martha has been a constant caregiver to her mother.  Nonnie had dementia and has been steadily going downhill.  Martha had to do everything for her mother.

A couple from Canada came by our trailer this morning -- they have a Liberty Deluxe like ours.  We talked to them a while.  We then drove up to the north part of the park and stopped at Inspiration Point and took a short hike up to Pyramid Point.  There was a beautiful view from there -- you could see the Manitou Islands.  We went back to the Casita and had lunch around 2:00 pm.  Jim wanted to tube down the Platte River but at 3:00 pm all the tubes were out and there was a waiting list of about 20 people.  We decided to go back to Betsie Point and look for more Petoskey Stones.  We found some more.  We didn't take our cameras but we wished we had because some people were windsurfing with big colorful kites.   

At 5:30 pm we stopped back by the tubing place and they had tubes available.  We went down the river from 6:00 pm to 8:15 pm.  The water was warm but the breeze made us rather cold.  I was glad we finally got to the getting out place.  We didn't take our cameras because we didn't want to risk getting them wet.  

We went back to camp and Jim grilled steaks around 8:45 pm.   We were going to go visit the couple from Canada but we got back so late we didn’t have a chance. Jim washed the dishes at the camp sink by the showers instead of using our water.  We have done this every night.  At 10:15 pm we had a campfire with the wood that the couple before us left.