David and I celebrated our forty-fifth wedding anniversary this week.  David took a week’s vacation and we took some short trips and spent lazy days around the house and just enjoyed being together.

One of the things we did was drive north to look for antique stores and fabric shops.  We drove through beautiful countryside with fields of corn and soybeans growing thick and lush.  We saw some barn quilts, alpaca farms and shining lakes.

On this northern trip we drove through the town where my oldest brother use to live.  When I was a little girl, we use to make the drive there to visit and I remember when we went there to see my first nephew after he was born.  I was an aunt when I was five.  My baby brother was an uncle when he was less than four months old.  That is how spread out the children in my family are.

We arrived in North Webster, Indiana where the Methodist camp, Epworth Forest is.  When I was a teen-ager I went to camp there several years.  I wondered how much it had changed.  To my delight it hadn’t changed very much at all.

We couldn’t drive into the actual camp because we weren’t registered to be there, but we drove around the area around the camp.

This is the auditorium where all the campers gathered in the evening for worship services.  It was always packed with teen-agers.  All those hormones in one place.

This is the lake where we swam and boated.  One summer one of my girlfriends and I discovered a rowboat with oars along the lake and took it out rowing without life jackets and me not knowing how to swim at the time.  No one told us we couldn’t take the boat so every day we would go get it and row  out into the middle of the lake by the island.  We always thought about getting on the island, but we were afraid we might get in trouble.  We never thought about the trouble we could get into for stealing someone’s rowboat.  No one ever told us we couldn’t.

There were cute cottages and gardens all around the lake.

I was a Methodist for years, but my husband grew up Baptist so we decided we would try the Baptist church after we had been married for several years and we have been in a Southern Baptist church ever since. But the memories of Epworth Forest will always be with me.

Boats come in at night for worship service.  I would have liked to see this, but we had to continue on.

We stopped at some stores with lake themes and a couple of antique stores and then we headed back south.

Of course I bought some fabric along the way even though I don’t need it.

I am going to make curtains for the upstairs bathroom, but first I have to paint it.  Should I paint it rose or one of the greens in the fabric?

Found this pattern I plan to make to hold my old clothespins.

Saw this VW.  David and I had a VW when we were first married and I loved it.  I’ll take one in this color, please.

My handsome chauffer drove us out of town.  We drove to Peru, Indiana under dark skies, lightening and light rain.  “I don’t think we should stop at any antique stores because it is raining,” David said.  “I’m up for it if you are,” I replied so we looked around town for antique stores.  Not finding any we started out of town on highway Nineteen when  out of the corner of my eye I saw a little brick building with an antique sign on it.  David turned the car around and we went back.  The lady in the store said she had another antique store back in town, so we headed to it.  We saw ambulances, fire trucks and police cars going the same direction we were.  Traffic was going very slowly and we saw flashing lights ahead.  After a long time we finally found the antique store.  It was a really wonderful one.  While I went in, David went out to see what was happening.  The young man in the store was talking on his cellphone about a tornado that had just gone through town.

Tornados evidently don’t stop me from antiquing because I found several treasures while I was there.  We told the young man we were heading out of town on highway Nineteen and he said, “No, you aren’t because it is closed because of the tornado passing through.  There are trees and limbs down all over it.”  He told us a route we could take to get out of town and we took it and left Peru thankful we had stopped at that first store or we may very well have been in the midst of the tornado.

We headed home tired and ready for our bed.  It was a fun trip and it is nice to get away, but home is best.

Here’s to long marriages, church camps and dodging tornados.  Bye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and it will come faster than we can turn around.  Here’s to church camps, long marriages and dodging tornados.  Bye.