Travel Day

 We managed to leave this morning at about 9:15.  I picked up the lug nut and a spare from the Dodge dealer, convinced it to go on to a somewhat rusty stud, and we were good to go.  Packed some of the last minute stuff and we were off.

We didn’t get the promised rain, yet, but it was just above freezing and the Winter Storm Watch was still in effect.

Our first stop was in Ann Arbor, to Zingerman’s Deli, for another fantastic lunch. Deb decided to double down on something she knew was good: the “Mary’s Commute”, a chicken salad sandwich with their applewood smoked bacon.  She said it was just as good the second time.  I went for the Half-Italian Sub.  Equally delicious.  We also stopped at Zingerman’s mail-order warehouse and picked up a pound of their bacon that Deb had pre-ordered a couple days ago.  We enjoyed the sandwiches in the parking lot of the warehouse.  Somehow, parking for an RV in downtown Ann Arbor just doesn’t happen very easily.  We picked up the sandwiches by ordering on the way, then I dropped Deb off at the door of the deli, drove around the block, and picked her up again.

We still had some time for the second stop of the day: The National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton.  We arrived at 4pm and the place closed at 5pm, so we had an hour.  An hour is not enough time to visit this place, so this is on our list of return locations.

The museum is massive, consisting of four enormous quonset-style hangars stuffed to the gills with all manner of flying things.  Things like B-2 Bombers, C-17 heavy transport, and other large aircraft seemed small in these cavernous rooms.

We spent a little time in the early flight section, with some of the Wright Brothers planes and equipment.  Also spent some time in the Leonardo DaVinci exhibit.  I didn’t know that he was the one that invented the ball bearing.  They had several reproductions of his machines there, including a tank that looked a bit like a wooden igloo.  The four wheels that moved the tank were hand-cranked by four people.  Must have taken some muscle to move that thing.

We had dinner in the parking lot of the museum, and watched the last few people leave. The parking lot must be built on an old runway--it was several car-lengths wide and probably a half mile long.

By this time we had shed all the clothing from this morning and were down to t-shirts.  It was 82 degrees and very windy.  We fought this wind for the next two hours,  finally stopping for the night at a Cracker Barrel in Georgetown, Kentucky.

My bride and fellow adventurer, using both old technology (a paper atlas) and new technology (an iPad) to navigate.