Michigan by way of Missouri?

     When we finally summoned our courage to tearfully leave our beautiful Texas family, with the goal of heading to Michigan to visit my sister Melissa and Ethan.  We headed north to Missouri to visit with some dear friends. 

    Paul and Rhonda have been called by God to volunteer at a camp for disabled kids called Camp Barnabas.   They invited us to come see the heartwarming work they are doing there, and it was incredible to witness.   Paul runs the waterpark there at the camp, and does many handyman tasks as well.  We took part in meals with the campers, and it was so neat to be accepted there among such special people.   An incredible experience overall, and it was great to catch up with some of our RVing friends.  Here are us and our hosts enjoying the slide at the waterpark:

    After our visit with Paul and Rhonda, we pointed the nose towards Kentucky for a couple of reasons. We wanted to visit with Staci's family in Paducah, and we wanted to spend some time learning more about the Creation museum and The Ark Experience. First we stopped and Rob and Missy's and Butch and Susan's compound.

Visiting with Carol was super fun, and I even helped get her truck fixed up a bit while we were there.  Justin came down from Idaho to join in the fun, and it was awesome to see him too.  Miri and Derek came briefly, so it was quite the righteous family gathering!

We then meandered towards the Creation Museum, which was quite overwhelming with information for a one day visit.

We bought a 3 day ticket for the Ark and Creation Museum, but ended up spending two days at the Ark, as it was even more engaging than the Museum and had mostly the same information in it.  It was quite the impressive structure too!

Well, we were headed to visit Melissa after all, and we eventually made it to Michigan and stayed in one of Thousand Trails campgrounds, which was not very impressive, as it was full of mosquitoes and lots of rain happened, closing the main drive into our section for 24 hours or so.

Luckily, Melissa talked us into going a bit further up the "thumb" of Michigan to stay with Jack's family, and we had a much better experience up there.

Stay tuned...