Dateline July 27, 2019, The Road to Chicago

We had had a wonderful time with the family at Lake Sunapee, and now it was time to start the trek west. The drive through Vermont and upstate New York was a fine one, and it carried us to Seneca Lake and another Harvest Host, a winery this time, where we pulled in around four on a Friday afternoon at the White Springs Winery and Glass Factory.

The place sits up on a hill in Geneva, New York, looking out over the lake. They gave us a good spot to park, we worked our way through a sampling of the many wines they make and carried off a few bottles for gifts, and when they closed at six they told us to make ourselves at home on the patio. We put together our dinner and ate it out there with the lake spread below us. Another good day.

Lunch in Cleveland. From Geneva we drove on to Cleveland, Ohio, to have lunch with Janice's niece Kim, her brother Steve's daughter, along with Kim's husband, Tony, and their two girls.

Daphne had just come home from two weeks at camp, worn clean out from all the fun, and Stella, who had had her own camp weeks before, is about to start learning to drive, which is hard to fathom. We talked over all of it, family and work and friends, and remembered the good times years ago at Janice's parents' place on Lake Sunapee, back when Kim was the age Daphne is now. As we were leaving, Janice spotted their cat parked in the front window, keeping a close eye on the bird feeder just outside.

We said our fond farewells and got back on the road.

Ari and Hedi, in Fremont. A two-hour drive brought us to Ari and Hedi, friends we made on our very first RV trip to Alaska, back in 2011, in the company of some fifty Roadtrek owners. It was about the best trip imaginable.

We had all met up at Mile Marker One on the Alaska Highway, in Dawson Creek, most of us perfect strangers to start. We did not travel as one big caravan, but we crossed paths again and again over the eight weeks, trading stories of what we had seen, and one line from that summer we still laugh about: if you don't have the picture, you didn't see it, it didn't happen. The friendships have lasted, and we make a point of calling on one another when we are anywhere near, which is how we came to be in Ari and Hedi's neighborhood.

Their home, where they have lived since 1986, sits on the bank of the Sandusky River, with all manner of boating going on, and a "Martini Barge" of their own tied up out front.

We had a drink there and then went along to a neighbor's house for a party, a fortieth birthday for their friend Bill that was also Bill and Erica's anniversary, with well over a hundred guests on hand. We joked with Ari and Hedi that it was awfully kind of them to throw us a party. Ari is a fine watercolorist, and he and Hedi gave Bill and Erica one of his limited-edition prints, which they treasured.

A good many of Ari's originals hang in the house, and his work shows in some twenty galleries around the country, much of it drawn from their travels. Both Ari and Hedi were small children in Germany during the Second World War, and they have had their stories written down and published for the family to keep. It was a fine evening among a houseful of new friends, and we mean to come back and spend a few proper days with them.

Swan Lake, in Indiana. We pulled out around seven the next morning and drove to Plymouth, Indiana, to play another course we had arranged to write about, Swan Lake.

The story of the place is a good one. A farmer named Roy Swanson, who ran one of the largest chicken operations in the country, was on a poultry trip out to Illinois when he got to talking with another farmer who had laid out a few golf holes on land he was not using. Roy came home with the bug, planned and built three holes of his own, called in a local architect named Al Humphrey, and watched those three grow into nine, and then into thirty-six, two full eighteen-hole courses. Swan Lake Resort opened over Memorial Day weekend in 1969, and in its day it was a destination for golf schools that drew thousands every summer. The Richard Klinger family, who owned the RV maker Holiday Rambler, bought it in 2000, and a thorough revival in 2017 earned it the Indiana Golf Course Owners Association's nod as the 2018 Indiana Course of the Year. The director of golf, Chad Hutsell, met us when we arrived, as welcoming a fellow as you could ask for, and pointed us to the premier Black Course. We had a fine round, and when we stopped back to thank Chad he had already gone, but the young man cleaning our clubs turned out to be his son, and he kept us laughing with stories of the place.

From Indiana it was on toward Chicago, and Pete and Bunny, and the real reason for this whole western swing: Janice's shot at qualifying.