Lucky Or Unlucky, You Be The Judge

Sunday afternoon we decided to take the GTO for a ride, as we didn't take it to St. Ignace car show. Made a route to the Big Rapids Eagles, then the Moose in Reed City and then Evert.

I have a Michigan map and the Garmen and the Eagles Club book. Should be a breeze. The gps worked ok but it is hard to get an overview of the route. I prefer maps. Paul thought he could find it and he did. A very large club, lots of parking and the member room was in the pack with private parking. A bonus in case cops are targeting Moose members. Sadly, this was the one day of the year that they clean carpets, it was closed.

So we head out to Reed City, follow some locals through the maze that is Big Rapids, just a few miles before Hwy 10, there is construction. The detour goes west, we want to go east, closer to our goal. Drive until we run out of pavement, turn north, run out of pavement turn west. Miles later we are going north again. Wander through Reed City, no Moose Club. Go out to 10, find the road, signal for a left hand turn. A pickup coming up fast behind us doesn't see the turn signal and at the last minute, to avoid a rear end collision, Paul shoots ahead and the truck goes off the side of the road. Then we try to make the turn, not enough room, cars are headed right for us (me) honking. Like this is where we want to be? Why not slow down a little? We get turned around in time and end up at the club in one piece. FYI we have a metal dash board and 45 year old lap belts. Pretty sure they are past the expiration date.

We get back out on the hwy and the traffic is even faster. Make it ok to theEvert Club. We watch the end of the Tiger's game and head for home. The map doesn't have road names, thanks State of Michigan, and the gps isn't any help either . We turn down likely roads and find a nice one going south. But it ends at a lovely fertilizer plant. Turn around and take several other dead end roads, a deer runs right in front of us, pavement ends and we turn around again. And again, and again. Finally we give up and go back to HWY 10 and decide to just take it to Farwell and home from there. Gosh what a relaxing ride we had. The country side is all green from the rain we have been having, and the scents..... surely this was the smelliest ride ever. We ran into at least 7 skunk smells, dead deer in ditches, and the old standby, manure. Lovely.

Lucky we didn't wreck the car, I think that is my stand on the whole day.