Oops!

When we left headed east out of Wausau on Labor Day morning, traffic was already building. The road east of Wausau leads to Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and points south. Evidently the holiday was over for a bunch of people.

We stopped in Green Bay to pay homage at Lambeau Field. Now when we watch a Packers home game we’ll know right where they are playing.

As we headed north and east along the top of Lake Michigan, the opposing traffic kept getting heavier. It was a beautiful day, and we stopped several times to just look at the lake and once for an ice cream cone and a root beer float.

We left the traffic behind when we turned north at Escanaba to cross the Upper Penninsula to our destination in Marquette. For about fifty miles across the penninsula, we never saw another car going our way, in front of us or behind.

It was Monday night, Labor Day night, the end of summer, but downtown Marquette was busy. We tried several places for dinner, finally joining another couple in the bar section of a very busy restaurant. They were from Wisconsin, she with a mother in Marquette. It was fun talking with them through the meal.

We walked around a little and then went back to our hotel. I was relaxed but didn’t want to read or watch television, so I thought I would get started on the paperwork to get into Canada. I have an app on my phone with which I can set things up so that we can ease through the border process. The first thing that popped up was something about our passports. Passports? Oops!

Actually, big OOPS! Neither of us thought to bring our passports. Not only did we forget them, we forgot to even think about bringing them.

Once the sinking feeling I get when I disappoint myself moderated, we began talking about going to Plan C. (We were already on Plan B. Plan A was to drive east across Canada and then return home through Colorado, but the wildfire smoke in Canada made us go to Plan B: drive east through Colorado and return through Canada.)

Plan C had been to return through South Dakota. We thought we’d judge how bad the smoke was in Canada once we got to Michigan and decide then whether to return via Canada or South Dakota. Well, the smoke is still hanging around although not bad enough that we wouldn’t go there. But without our passports, returning through Canada was no longer an option.

We talked for a while about getting someone to get in our house and overnight our passports to us but decided there was no guarantee they’d get to us in time, so South Dakota it was. I scrambled to cancel all of our Canadian motel reservations and make rough calculations on how long it would take us to get home on Interstate 90.

Monday night I worried that with all the disruption I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I calmed myself enough to sleep fairly well. About 3 in the morning I felt the covers over my feet being tugged – a tug-tug-tug, tug-tug-tug. I ignored it for a while but then thought maybe Andrea had fallen on the floor and was signaling me for help. I got up and looked at the floor at the foot of the bed. No Andrea; she was in the bathroom. I got back in bed and started to go back to sleep, but then I felt the covers near my feet moving around. Perhaps there was a critter trapped between the layers – a bat perhaps? I sat up and patted the covers to see if there was a lump somewhere. Nothing. Finally I went back to sleep.

In the morning I asked the desk clerk if anyone had ever died in our room. He said not to his knowledge. But when I told him what had happened he said someone else had reported something similar. (Something like this had happened to me once before, in an old hotel in Nevada.) I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but I am willing to keep an open mind.

Today, Tuesday, we drove west across Michigan and Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota. We saw lots and lots of trees – big ones and small ones, live ones and dead ones, deciduous and evergreen. Miles and miles of them. 

Tonight we’re in Duluth, one of our favorite places to stop. We’ve settled in and now it is raining. Hard. Tomorrow we continue west.

By the way, my tick(?) bite is looking better. Here’s the progress, Saturday through Tuesday: