Friday is the first day of the weekend, so it counts as a weekend experience doesn't it? Here'show it all started... I was sitting in my office on Thursday when my phone started to ring. I noticed it was @a4xjeeper giving me a call, so I answered it.
"How are you feeling?" He asked me. "Fine" I answered hesitantly, because I know when my good friend calls me instead of texting me it means he has a question to ask me or he needs something. That sounds a lot worse than it really is. It's just that after decades of friendship, we know each other very well.
"I bought another Jeep" he said. It turns out he found the Willy's you seen in the photo above over in Wisconsin. The guy he was going to have drive over with him to pick it up wasn't feeling the best, so he needed an alternative. He said he planned on driving there early Friday morning, then heading part way back, getting a hotel for the night, and then finishing the drive home on Saturday morning.
I asked what his timeline was as I needed to get permission run it by @mrsbozz first of course.
He pretty blatantly said, if you don't go, I will probably make the drive alone. That sealed the deal for me, but I still needed to be sure I wasn't ruining my wife's plans for the weekend. @mrsbozz easily gave her approval, so I used a PTO day for Friday and started packing my bag.
It was a pretty cold and raining morning on Friday when I left the house at 5:30 to head over to his place. We got in his 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 Turbo Diesel with a flatbed trailer attached and got on the road. We actually ran into a slight squall of snow as we were heading across the "UP".
We made pretty good time hitting the Mackinac Bridge at around 8:30 or 9:00 AM and then started the long drive across the upper peninsula of Michigan on US 2. After crossing the bridge, we stopped and got gas and I took over the driving from St. Ignace, MI to Marionette, WI.
We talked about all manner of things from crypto, to investments, solar power, nuclear power, cars, his business, my work at the school, @mrsbozz's work at the school and everything else we could fill the time with.
Around 11:00 AM Central time we stopped in Marionette Wisconsin for lunch. I'm going to cover the food from this trip in another post, so you will have to wait for that to see all the tantalizing food photos.
From Marionette, we continued south on 41 and made our way past the outskirts of Green Bay Wisconsin passing farm fields and rolling hills. We had some great conversation, good tunes, and interesting scenery to pass the time. As I said, we were also making good time.
At one point, we passed a sign that was advertising Exotic Dancers. It was painted on a ramshackle building that made us wonder just how many teeth the dancers actually had. Imagine our surprise when we realized the sign wasn't the actual building, it was just closer to the road so they used it to advertise. The actual building was in even rougher shape than the one they used as a sign!
Needless to say, we kept right on trucking (we would have anyway).
Berlin is a quaint little town in Wisconsin. Probably quite similar to a lot of the other small towns in the US. For me it reminded me a lot of some of the smaller villages you pass through when you are driving through the Eastern part of Michigan more often referred to as "the thumb". If you have ever seen a map of Michigan, this name will be clear to you for obvious reasons.
The location of the Jeep was actually about fifteen minutes outside of town further in the country. We pulled into a long drive that seemed to belong to a farm and made our way back to the storage barns where the Willy's Jeep was being held.
If you visit @a4xjeeper's profile, you might notice that he already has a Jeep Willy's that he has worked on restoring. He was leaning towards using this one for parts, but once he saw the condition, he decided that it might be worth restoring.
As the seller pointed out, the frame is still in really good condition and it had a few pieces that his old Jeep was lacking.
Most specifically, this amazing original tailgate!
With barely any effort from the winch on the front of his flatbed trailer, we soon had the Jeep loaded, fastened down and ready to be taken home. His winch had a wireless controller that made things especially easy. It's too bad he didn't have that winch when we hauled several vehicles across Michigan a year or two ago.
The guy who sold him the Jeep showed us the next project he was working on. It was a beautiful Plymouth Road Runner he had covered in his garage. I declined to take photos of it out of respect, but trust me when I say it was amazing!
With the Willy's loaded and $1500 less in his pocket, we got back on the road. By that point we needed some diesel fuel, so we found a gas station and filled up the truck. I took over driving and got us all the way to Escanaba, MI before we stopped again for dinner.
I've gotta admit, taking photos from a moving vehicle is hard. I have a newfound respect for my wife after trying to snag photos while my buddy was driving the truck. It seems like the biggest issue was the autofocus. It kept taking too long and I ended up getting a shot well past what I intended on capturing. My wife deserves a heaping dose of credit for all the photos she has taken from the passenger seat over the years!
As we were travelling and realizing how good of time we were making, we started kicking around the idea of just heading straight home. My friend was concerned about driving across US 2 at night with all the wildlife that calls the upper peninsula home, but honestly, we saw more deer in the lower part of Michigan than the upper part.
After we ate a quick dinner in Escanaba, I told him I was good for another two to three hours at least.
That got us back to St. Ignace about 12 hours from when we were there last. He took over the driving, and we pulled into his driveway around 11:30 at night. I think this might have been my first time heading over the Mackinac Bridge at night, and it was a pretty cool experience.
With a 6:00 AM start time and an 11:30 stop time, makes our total trip about 17.5 hours and 1000 miles round trip. With a half hour for lunch, a half hour for dinner, gas stops and the time we loaded the Jeep, we only had about two hours that we weren't on the road. Oddly enough, if it wasn't for that dang Lake Michigan being in the way, we probably could have shaved ten hours (round trip) off our time!
Even if this "quick" trip is the only thing I do for the next three days, I think it is safe to say I had a pretty awesome weekend!
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