Five Mergansers

We left the cabin this morning and are tonight in Ann Arbor. We had a nice and quite dinner tonight with Anne and Bill at the Red Hawk, an eatery on State Street. It was a pretty easy drive south, especially for me, since Anne did most of the driving. There was the usual traffic, with a backup north of Flint and although the weather was a little rainy, most of the rough stuff was in the western half of the state. We whiled away the miles listening to a podcast, “Stuff You Missed In History Class”. As the name implies, on this podcast two women tackle obscure, but interesting lessons from history. Today, we learned all about the long running conflict between margarine and butter, the Chinese admiral Zheng He and his 14th century treasure fleet, The Jacobite uprising of 1745, the late Victorian manure crisis and knitting. Let’s not forget about knitting. Did you know that Vermont once had only pink margarine? And before the advent of cars, large cities were literally drowning among piles of road apples? Anyway, it helped to pass the time and the final episode on the history of knitting helped to power Anne through the final leg of today’s drive.