The quote above is kinda good advice for life in general, but right now, I am applying it to memories of my recently departed wife. We were almost opposites in many ways, so there are memories of times we disagreed, sometimes strenuously. But that is not what our 36 years together were about. We had a lot of good times to overshadow the bad.

---

I know this is Picture Saturday, but I’m going to add more than usual words to the pictures in this post. I want to tell you the story of the last vacation we went on together. It was our 2018 anniversary trip to see Punxsutawney Phil, or at least where he came out every year to decide whether we are going to have a short or long winter. I know that sounds like a strange place to be the center stone of a vacation, but hear me out.

By this time, my wife’s health was in serious decline. We skipped the previous year’s anniversary trip for that reason. But she suddenly said she wanted to visit “Gobbler’s Knob” where Punxsy Phil made his annual prediction of how long each winter will be.

Of course, I agreed, but really couldn’t understand why she chose that destination? 🙄 I couldn’t see driving over 500 miles to see such a simple place, so I set up other destinations along the route. We stopped in Cleveland for an overnight visit with some of my high school classmates and a visit to that City. It was there she took this picture of me at the East Side Market Café. This morphed image ended up being one of my favorite avatars. Continuing on our way to the appointed destination, we also took a 2-hour tour through many of the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. That was the most interesting part of the trip for me.

Before we arrived at Gobbler’s Knob, it had been raining for a couple of days there, so everything was soaked. For some reason, my wife decided to forgo a small parking area there to pull off into the grass. Before I could tell her that would be a mistake, we were already up to the hubcaps in mud! The more she tried to back up, the further down the hill we slid.

This park was several miles from nowhere without a person in sight. I finally managed to find a towing service on my iPhone and called them. I was visibly upset, but all my wife could do was giggle about our circumstances. Eventually, I came around to see the silliness of our day to visit Punxsy Phil and ended up giggling along with her. Little did I know that that would be the last vacation we went on together.