To Kalamazoo, MI- Thursday, October 26, 2023

     This is not really a vacation, but since we are certainly out of town on a trip, we'll post a few items here.  Scott's family received the sad news last Friday that his Aunt Delores passed away.  It was not a surprise since her health had been declining pretty rapidly over the last few months, but that doesn't make it less sad.  Scott hasn't seen her a lot over the past few years, but it seemed like he went up to Uncle Don's and Aunt Delores's house once a year or more when he was growing up, and he certainly saw them more often than that when they came to Springville or Cleveland.    Scott knew he would regret it if we didn't go for her funeral.

     Scott and Julie both called in absences for Thursday and Friday this week.  Scott was ever so upset that he was going to miss "Buffalo Bills Day" at school....  (If you know Scott, you know that's not true.)  We took Abby and made our way through Canada to Kalamazoo, Michigan.  

     We came across the Peace Bridge into Canada, and took the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor to Detroit.  Abby was getting fussy around Ann Arbor so we decided to make a stop there for dinner.  We pulled into a place called "Metzger's," a German restaurant.  It is a place we would highly recommend.  The service was friendly and very fast.  The atmosphere was fabulous.  Not only were their the regular cuckoo clocks and steins on the wall, but there were stained glass windows of German locations.  And in a touch that you can't just fake, there were all sorts of articles, pictures and memorabilia from the Metzger family that started the restaurant over 95 years ago.  To top it all off, 0the food was excellent.  We shared some schnitzel that might just have been some of the best that we've had, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

     We got to our hotel in Kalamazoo a little later.  Scott's parents had already arrived, so we found them.  Julie unpacked the suitcase and discovered that, somehow, the black dress shirt that Scott had laid out in the suitcase wasn't there anymore.  It was already 7:30 and we had to rush to JCPenney's at a nearby mall to buy a new one before they closed at 8:00.  We picked up some Chick-Fil-A sandwiches for Scott's parents on the way back because they had only had doughnuts for dinner.