Last rally day

September 8 – It was 49 when we got up this morning, brrr!  We’re not in Florida that’s for sure!  It warmed up to 70, so turned out to be a really nice day!  Bill wasn’t feeling so good this morning.  A bit congested.  I cooked the sausage I bought yesterday and we had breakfast and then headed down to Clare, MI so we could go to the Amish Bakery I heard about and to the sporting goods place to use our gift card.

It’s only about 15 miles down the road and the exit for the bakery was also the one for the sporting goods shop, so that was nice.  Be the time we got there the bakery was just about out of the good stuff!  We left with a pan of cinnamon rolls and a bag of peanut butter cookies.  We each had a cookie right off since we didn’t have a sweet at breakfast!  (good excuse, huh?)

Jay’s is a huge sporting good place and the lot was packed as they were having an annual sale and had a gun range trailer set up and other extra vendors.  It’s sorta like Bass Pro Shop but they had NO sports equipment, all hunting and fishing stuff and I mean they had a lot of it.  Guns, bows, tackle, grills, camping stuff, clothing….  They did have a nice home décor area with woodsy stuff and after circling the store twice we ended up back there.  I found a runner for my kitchen table for $21.99, so we did OK.

We drove thru Clare to see the town and like lots of the old downtowns, they are all gift shops, restaurants ,etc.  We passed a Walgreens and I needed a battery so while I was in there Bill was checking out the best place for lunch.  It was The Whitehouse and we had passed it.  A tiny little place with 6 booths inside and the cook right where you can see her put your burger on the griddle.  They had some picnic tables outside.  They’ve been open in that spot since 1936.  I think the cook was there when it started!  She and the waitress were older than Bill!  While he parked I was lucky to get the next table that emptied.  Bill had a double BLT and I had a Reuben.  The service was a little slow but the sandwiches were good and the waitress was a sweetheart!

Time to head back to Harrison.  We did a test run to make sure what direction we wanted to take in leaving the fairgrounds to the highway.  The downtown has lots of barriers up and some we didn’t think I could get the RV towing the truck in and around so we opted to take the longer way. 

Tonight was a prepared dinner meal at the rally but we hadn’t paid for it and it started at 4:30.  I went down for the raffle drawings but we didn’t win anything, nothing new!   Then we just had chicken pot pies for dinner and went for the evening entertainment at 6:30.  Tonight was a solo male singer who was at the rally with his family and his parents.  We really enjoyed his selections but his range was not the best.  He only sang to recorded music and didn’t play any instruments. They had first timers, out of staters, and Canadians come up front and we had to do the "Chicken Dance" for the crowd.  should of had a video of that!  My knees were about done by the time we finished!  It was a "hoot" though!

We remembered to take our food and toy donation down!  We sat with Paul and Sandra again.  Neither couple won anything tonight.  We had our cookies and headed back to the RV.  We told Paul and Sandra if we didn’t see them in Frankenmuth we’d see them in November at the Florida Rally.  They were really nice folks and we enjoyed their company.