Decisions, decisions, decisions!

Do we stay or do we go? It's a really hard rain coming down today (Thursday) so we will be sitting tight at our campsite all day. We're trying to decide whether to move to the western side of the state as it's supposed to rain steadily for two days here. There is also a high wind advisory that is going to continue till Saturday at Munising, MI, which is where we were going to go next but we don't want to drive in high winds nor be rocked and rolled by them when we park, if we can avoid it. We'll sit around today and discuss and plan where we are going to go next. I'm going to try out the central vac system while we're rained in. We've also discovered that the hot water heater tank, which is much bigger than our previous one, runs out of hot water faster than our old one did! Oh, no! That's not good! We're going to get out the manuals and see what might be the problem. We only had a six gallon hot water heater on the Challenger and the Tiffin has a ten gallon heater. We should not be running out of hot water!

Last night we went to the Antler Restaurant on Portage Ave. just down the street from our campground for a late supper. If you are an avid outdoorsman, you'll love this place. It's a taxidermist's delight--stuffed moose heads, deer, bear, fox, elk, fish, and goats everywhere on the walls with antlers of every shape and size jammed in between the creatures. It seems like there's not an inch of space on the walls and ceiling that isn't covered with antlers or animals. There's even a birch bark canoe hanging from the ceiling! It's very cozy. (Reviewer's translation: dark and cave like) If you are creeped out by preserved animals staring down at you and stuff looking like it could fall off the wall at any moment, you won't like it!  Their steak special for the evening was tough and overcooked, and the twice baked potato was very runny, but we might  have caught them on a bad night. We did like the atmosphere, however!

Lex Walsh, veteran barber

antique barber shop

I decided Eldy should get his haircut by a professional barber today instead of me...we drove into town and discovered an OLD barbershop on Arlington Street, downtown Sault Ste. Marie. As we walked in, we walked into the past. The barber's name was Lex Walsh, and he'd been a barber for 44 years, he was actually 77 years young. He proceeded to entertain us with stories, a little bit of history and some family tales while he cut Eldy's hair. He had antique newspaper ads on the wall dating from 1946. (Carton of cigarettes $1.49) Check out the barber's chairs--they were over 50 years old! His original license was hanging on the wall, and he made a joke about not bothering to get it renewed since then. He was VERY entertaining. I wish I had gotten my camera out fast enough to catch him spraying the top of Eldy's head with Lord-only-knows what kind of stuff. Then he proceeded to get out some sort of buffing towel and he polished Eldy's head like you would buff a pair of shoes-back and forth, back and forth across the top of Eldy's head! I laughed so hard I cried. He did that as a joke, but we got a big kick out of that, regardless. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves during Eldy's haircut, that's for sure!