Onway, MI

Does one little city deserve a whole post?  I suppose it does.  It is a tiny city, but it is where we got our home.  Back in California; when we were trying to decide which travel trailer to purchase, Jamie was pretty sold on the Keystone Laredo 284BHS.  We saw one in Martinez and while we weren’t excited by the sticker price (they would only go down to $23K) he liked the unit.  I called around the country looking for a better deal and spoke with Cliff at Brewbaker’s in Onaway Michigan.  He had (still does :)) a Laredo and said if we decided on something else, to give him a call and he’d see if he could get it for us.  When we decided on the Ameri-Camp travel trailer, I called him and he got one $8000.00 less than we could get anywhere else. 

We got to Onaway early in the morning and spent the day going over all the trailer features and learned how everything worked while Cliff took our van to the mechanic to have a new hitch, electrical cabling and brake controller installed.  First pic of the trailer and Jamie’s ass  We’re still thinking of upgrading the Hayes to a Jordan (this will only make sense to the RV folk…).  Brewbakers gave us a nice conversion van to drive around in while ours was in the shop.  When night came and still no van, Sammy Brewbaker arranged for us to spend the night in the adjacent motel.  We never had to ask; he simply arranged it all.  We had planned to spend the night in the trailer, but Sammy thought it would be too cold.  I am still touched at his thoughtfulness.

Next morning, our van was ready; we watched the van being hitched to the trailer and after a couple runs around the block by mom, dad climbed in and I pulled her out of the dealership.  We had planned to spend the night along the lake in lower Michigan or go visit Vicky (neopagan) in Lansing, but hearing the forecast for snow the next day, we decided to make a marathon driving session and push on to my sister’s (about an hour north of Chicago).  We spent about an hour at Target in Grand Rapids (actually, a town south of there) letting the kids get some energy out and buying a DVD (Veggietales).  I figured they just might need something to get them through the evening. 
We left Target (and Grand Rapids) about 9pm, picked up an hour once we crossed into Illinois (and promptly left it on I80 while we waited, parked on the freeway in construction traffic at midnight) and hit Aunty Michelle’s about 2am.  It was a VERY LONG day.