Grand Rapids Michigan

This weekend has pretty much been a total loss....of course, all week while Bill is working it is rather nice and then come Saturday and Sunday when we wanted to get out a golf some it is rain and cold. Right now the wind is rattling the RV pretty good as we sit here in the Jenison MI Target parking lot. At least this parking lot is somewhat quiet at night as the Wyoming MI location was very, very loud! The only decent spot we could find to park was near the busy street as we really can't park totally in back of the store as they get trucks and we'd be in the way. We try to park with the door side to a patch of grass so Dozey can be let out on his chain by himself as he, of course, has to find the perfect spot to take a pee and that can take up to 10 minutes or so. There was a Steak N Shake in the parking lot of the Wyoming store and Bill said that when he went out to get something out of his truck at 2am it was busier than hell. Must be the only place to go get munchies after bars.

We have been having problems with our internet connection and I called Verizon who proceeded to tell me that lower Michigan is a "problem spot" as Alltel used to have an agreement with Sprint, who is really big here, to use their towers but that Verizon did not continue that agreement. So we ordered another part to a mobile system, an amplifer, which should have helped the signal. We picked it up at FedEx and hooked it up....couldn't get ANY signal now rather than just a bad one. So I called 3G tech support, the company we got both the router and the amplifer from. They are not sure why it isn't working but that maybe we were "too close" to a cell phone tower.....huh? So the amplifer might just be getting sent back this week. It is crucial that the wireless work really well as we turned off Directv right now as living in parking lots and moving almost every day is not conducive to setting up a tripod and locating the satellite every time we move. I don't miss it as I never got the TV but Bill does of course. We are planning on having a bigger LCD installed on a mount where the old tube TV is right now. That way we can hook up the Wii and I can get back to my yoga and other Wii Fit games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Rapids,_Michigan

We will not be unhappy to leave Grand Rapids as it really is not outstanding as far as we are concerned. The biggest thing going for it was that Elton John played here last night and we really tried to get last minute tickets in a good location for cheap. No go so we decided to pass. It would have been nice to see him live though. Other trivia on Grand Rapids is that it is the second largest city in Michigan after Detroit but doesn't seem to have much as far as claims to fame except for being the home to the Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum and 1945 it was the first city in the United States to add flouride to its drinking water.

We started with stores in the southeast corner of the city and have worked our way west and then north. There is a store tonight and tomorrow night and then we head east towards the lake shore. Hopefully we will find some better scenery than the dull, dirty, browns and grays that we have seen here. But, like we said, it is definitely weeding out places that we know we don't want to visit again. The only places that we could see ourselves wanting to visit yet in lower Michigan are Sault Ste Marie and Mackinac Island. Unfortunately we won't have time this trip and the weather isn't really cooperating either!