Today duty calls so I sorted four loads of laundry and we packed it all in the car. There is no laundry room at the campground so we're off to Beulah. First we stop at Benzonia Public Library for the final day of their fund-raising book sale. We bought $4.00 worth of books at 1:45. At two o'clock all books went on sale for $1.00 for everything you could fit in a bag, but life's short and it was a fund raiser for the library so it was a good cause.
I went upstairs and left Bob browsing in the basement. I signed up to use their PCs. They have DSL and Wireless but I didn't want to use wireless to pay my bills. This is the first library we found with wireless where we could have brought the laptop here. Our laptop is out in the truck since we planned to lunch in Frankfort and use the Crescent Bakery's wireless that I saw in an ad. The Benzonia librarian is such a control freak I decided to just pay my bills and we got out of there. I'm having bad tech vibes today anyway. The first PC I tried locked up three times so I moved to the next one (I took my 30 minutes timer the library insists you us with me to the next station) and that put the librarian in a snit-"That timer doesn't go with that PC." They had three identical PCs and timers at the table so I was confused but I didn't argue. The second PC had a CD drive only and I bought a 25 cent floppy from Ms. Snit (you can't bring in your own floppies) in order to copy my bank statements for balancing later at home. So I moved one more time to a third PC. Bob came up and sat down beside me and logged on to the one I just left since no one else was there. Ms. Snit had a wall-eyed hissy fit (as my friend Glenda would say) because he didn't sign in (i.e. put his name on a scrap of paper on the desk.) We're out of here ASAP. I finished my business and we hit the road.
On to Frankfort. Main street downtown has lots of tourist trap shops. We browsed around in a golf shop for a while. They actually had the no-headache-visors I've been looking for since I bought that one in El Dorado, Ark. That was last November! Of course now that I found some, I had just found that 'no-hurt' visor at Champion Hill yesterday. I'll have to see which one really works better. We ducked in the Crescent Bakery and I asked if they had wi-fi. The young gal behind the counter said "What's that" with a blank look on her face. I said, "You know, access to the Internet." She says "Oh yeah, we have wireless." So much for the age of communication! It was 3:00 and she said they were only open until 4:00 today. We walked back towards the truck to get the laptop but with the hi-tech hassles I'm having today I made a command decision to axe the whole thing. I may be sorry if we don't find access for several months.
It is another gorgeous day; a little warmer at 80 degrees but still no humidity. We drove around Betsie Lake to Elberta and went back to Mayfair Tavern that we enjoyed so much. We had the place to ourselves. I had the Alaskan Pollack Fish Melt and Bob had a Reuben. We shared and both were excellent. Now that lunch was over we had nothing left but to go back to Beulah and hit the Laundromat. It was a really clean place. The change machine worked so we got a bunch of quarters. An older couple around 70 who might have been Rvers was just leaving as we came in. They were both folding and carrying stuff to the car together. As we finished, a younger couple, maybe 40 or so, dressed to the nines and sporting bronze tans, dropped off several loads for the attendant to do. There is dome kind of generational disconnect there. Maybe we're on the wrong side of that spectrum. Here we are 50-somethings, with a hot Saturday night in the Laundromat in a town with 500 people (winter population.)
For a big treat we went across the street to Cherry Hut for a dessert. We stopped at the Farmer's Market next door first for fruit (apricots, watermelon, nectarines, blueberries and of course Michigan sweet cherries.) Then we shared a Cherry Hot Fudge Brownie with ice cream. Bob went all out with a Cherry Adel as well while I stuck with coffee. We were back home by 6:00 where we winched the laundry back into the closets. Then we read the paper, watched Battle Star Gallactica's first season episode reruns on NBC (one of only 2 channels we're getting here.) I checked for phone messages when we got home and the lady from Indian River had called. So I called her back and we have a reservation for 13 days starting next Tuesday, July 12. She will let us know if anything opens up for longer.
I talked to my sister for a bit until the cell phone blanked us out with no warning (sorry about that, Carla.) It was fun to hear all the plans for my niece, Megan, and Casey's couples shower next week.
It's 11:31 p.m. and 67.0 degrees.