A wandering day - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

t walgamuth · #1 08-04-2013, 10:50 AM

Now I know how Moses must have felt when he led the Israelites through the deserts for 40 years.

Yesterday we had my oldest sister's 50th wedding anniversary to celebrate in South Bend beginning at 4 pm. We had nothing that we had to do so left around 1030 with the plan of meandering, garage sailing and antiquing our way up there. The normal straight through drive to SB is about 2.25 hours.

The Mrs read about a town wide garage sale in Goodland a tiny sleepy town about 40 min straight north and a little west from us.

We stopped in Reynolds and ate at a little mom and pop place which served enormous portions so I fell asleep soon after we left leaving the pilot duties to the Mrs. As we neared Goodland (she told me later) there was a detour sign because they were replacing the bridge. Being in an obedient mood she took the detour about forty miles around a big square and ended up 400 yards from where she started on the other side of the bridge. We later asked directions from this 12 year old boy who showed us a way that was three blocks or so of driving so she got really upset at herself about all that.

The garage sales were not productive for her but I bought two books and a nice old Columbia vise for my workbench.

So we looked at the clock and decided we needed to head for South Bend. You know the phrase "you can't get there from here"? Well it fits the trip from Goodland to South Bend.

All the zig zag routs angled away from our destination so we went north on I 65 wishing to take the toll road which would have landed us about 2 miles from my Niece's home but a little confusion on the signage led me away from the toll road and to a round about route on I 94. A traffic backup later and we arrived an hour late at the party.

Had a very excellent time chatting with old friends and relatives and headed home around 8 pm.

I wanted to avoid the heavy traffic on the 31 bypass and knew there was a country road cut across to 23 and headed home, taking the shortcut. Unfortunately the road we took turned out to be a sort of linear maze which led us on a one way venture zig sagging north south east west for at least 30 miles, managing to parallel 23 instead of intersecting it. The road was paved but very dippy and rocky (as in rocking a cradle side to side) and most of it was fresh chip and seal so we had to endure the pebbles dinging her new Mazda5 for about an hour.

So we managed to end up in Walkerton after about an hour and a half when if I had not taken the shortcut we would have reached in 20 minutes.

I felt like a complete dunce but the Mrs. refused to exploit my feelings and remained cheery toward me all the way home.

We arrived about 1130 pm, an hour and a half more or less longer than it should have taken.

I did sleep well though.