I left the home of Ohio friends to begin my journey, and was met by a Michigan friend within an hour at a grocery store in Ann Arbor so that we could leave one of the cars behind and have an easier time with parking in the town. Of course, Ann Arbor is most well known for being the home of the University of Michigan, so visiting the town reminded me of Cambridge, MA the year before, only in the company of an old friend who put her kids through college there and lived close by. We headed to Zingerman’s Deli and, upon ordering and paying, discovered we had a 60 minutes wait. So we shopped a little and wandered around the town catching up. When we did eat, the sandwich was so abundant that we split it. Only then did we head into campus. As a top tier university, it is gorgeous; the thing I found unique was the hammocks hanging like cocoons off trees.
Once we finished our wandering, we headed back to her house in Plymouth to pull together a picnic for an outdoor concert of 80’s music happening in town on that beautiful Friday evening. We packed a salad and some of my cousin’s cherry wine (I had hoped to empty and return the bottle on my way back through Ohio) and we sat drinking and picknicking as the music of our shared high school and college years sounded around us. One of the local gentlemen even joined us, which made us feel even more young and silly than the Cyndi Lauper covers. Then we headed to the airport to collect her adult daugther before we shut down for the night at her home. It was a delightful chance to enjoy the company of a good friend.