It is Sunday morning and it’s another moving day, today we’ll have us heading south down I-75 toward Kentucky, I don’t suspect we will get much further than just into Kentucky today. We have coffee and moonshine planned for 9am this morning which is on the new time, as last night was the fall back from daylight saving time. I really don’t understand why we ever change back and forth anymore, everyone complains about it every year, and the nuisance of changing the clocks on everything is a real pain in the butt. The changing of the time on all the clocks becomes a chore as we head west, as we travel through a number of different time changes moving from Eastern through Central to Mountain and finally the Pacific time zone.

Well we hit the road a few minutes before 11am this morning, it was tough leaving the Ward’s, the couple of day just flew past, we enjoyed the conversation and being toured around the area. Butch and Betty are very special people to give of themselves so freely, both Miss Laurie and I are already missing them and we just crossed into Kentucky, so it would appear that Pemberville will be a planned stop in April as we head back to Canada.

The drive today was easy, Sunday through Cincinnati was a good move, the road seemed much better that a year ago, there is still some construction but seemed to be nearer completion, there was only two people playing bumper cars on I-75 so-we only had one back up all the way to Kentucky so other that one fuel stop we pushed right through to the rest stop south of Florence KY and are nibbling on some cheese and crackers for a late lunch, we have driven four hours and so now I expect to just move down 75 a few miles to the next rest area, as I remember it is much leveler then this one at Florence.

We settled into a rest area just north of Georgetown KY, it is a spot we have stopped at before, and if things go well we can get the end spot that tucks us in to the end spot so the left side of Thunder is by a nicely treed area and only leaves parking to the right. This help reduce the noise of the big trucks idling which makes sleeping a little easier. We are going to have an early dinner, watch a little TV and I expect to turn in early as we adjust to the time change, it was a little more travel today than normal with us putting on 255 miles (410 kms) but we knew this spot and we may have a little excursion tomorrow and this puts us very close…stay tuned

Day 762

It is Saturday morning and things are a little cloudy both outside and inside my head, as we expected the Ward family has accepted us like part of the family, this was a destination Miss Laurie and I had decided on in early summer when our schedule made it very apparent that a summer visit was not going to happen. The Ward family home is beautiful, and the property around the home is almost a park setting with the back yard being home to a pond, that has been the family gathering spot for years. When we last seen Butch and Betty they were talking about selling this family home and moving into a new build in a nearby subdivision, but have since decided instead to do a number of renovations to their home that make it a more open concept, obviously a great decision. Their home could grace any magazine, the detail to workmanship, design, decoration, and functionality, but any one that spent any time with the Wards would expect nothing less.

So our Saturday started with fresh perked coffee and some butter pecan moonshine, and progressed from there, we were treated to a tour of the area, we seen Luke’s homestead (Butch and Betty’s son) and some of the more than 700 acres that he works, we seen where Lindsay and Brian live (their daughter and son in law) we toured downtown Pemberville, which Butch lovingly referred to small town USA, and as we walked into the local grocery Butch was greeted by name, and as he picked up what would become the evenings dining experience that Brian was going to prepare for us for dinner it became very apparent how proud Butch was of his, town, state, and family. We toured the area and seen how that most of their family live just within a few miles of family home, it is a wonderful little town, and as we drove around Miss Laurie commented on how much pride everyone shows with how well taken care of all the properties were.

We then ventured off to Bowling Green, which is an university town located on I-75 just south of Toledo and about ten miles west of Pemberville, again a clean little town with lots of locally owned fast food / pizza / bars & pubs which cater to the university crowd which almost doubles the population of Bowling Green every fall at enrolment time. We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant (average people) that featured bloody Mary’s and Mimosa’s, what could possibly go wrong…lunch was great, other than I eat way to much. We headed back to Pemberville and made a couple of stops on the way to visit and get to know the Ward family, and their life on a day to day basis. And as we hurried back to the family home our thought was, there might be enough time for a little nap before the dinner preparations started…but things don’t always work out as planned…

Now dinner and the preparations were a true dining experience, picture a 64 ounce (almost 2 kg) Tomahawk Steak, I know how difficult that might be so I managed a couple of pictures just to help, well Brian (Lindsay’s Brian) marinated this chunk of beef then grilled it to perfection, it was melt in your mouth, cut it with a fork kind of perfection. That we were able to enjoy with the Ward family, and was followed by Butch’s world famous brandy Alexander’s blended to perfection as well. This has been a great visit, we have talked for two days and the conversations flowed almost as freely as the cocktails, to be welcomed into the Ward family as we have is quite overwhelming and has touched our hearts.

These last two days have been a whirlwind of events, we have met so many members of the family, enjoyed seeing all the places of which Butch and Betty had spoke of last winter, that this visit will stay with us forever, it has been an honour to be invited, and as we plan our departure tomorrow we will leave with heavy hearts knowing that it will be another five months or so before we get to visit the Ward family again.

Day 761