Report from the road...

I slept until 6 this morning. Totally awesome! Laid there for another half hour before getting up for coffee and a book. Van and I went swimming; felt good to do the laps and stretching.

It was fun taking Gin to the store to buy food, lots of food. Hanging out with this adult daughter of mine just reminds me I need to communicate with her, to reach out as much as I can. She's got so much going on, and we are both forgetting the stories of our lives to share with each other.

So we got some pictures with each other and I got one of her roommate, Daniel. This is cool - he is a poet. He's written a very nice one about Ginny when she dances, and this is a good part:

She dances
like the angel
we know is sneaky...

her skirts swirl
with the gentle undertones
of a live lived rarely indecent....

I like Daniel. I think he and his house is good for Gin and that she has found a safe place to live for a while. And her dog is doing well. Funny friend that Bomber has, this chocolate lab named Hunter. Hunter cannot bear to be locked behind a fence when the rest of us are in the yard taking pictures. And so she jumps over the fence to get to us. hehe. I took pics and will load them tomorrow.

We left at 1 and headed on the hwy 19th up to Hannibal route. And in Hermann, we took a right turn. It really was the right one. We ended up at this small store, in search of good coffee, that was just a delight. The woman who owned it was very fun, she knew so much about the aeronautics world that Van grew up in and loved. She and Van talked while I shopped, all of us drinking strong German coffee. The best coffee of the trip, btw. I got a load of treasures, including a recipe book of hers that she had written from recipes she remembered from her mother, who used coffee in everything. Plus I got five lovely coffee cups that I fell in love with and Van bought me for Mother's Day. I'll get a picture in here tomorrow.

I did a lot of sewing on the wool dress, the embroidery around cuffs and neckline. And we saw a lot of country on this new-to-Van route. I think he likes it. We are in New Liberty, Iowa, tonight, just chilling.