A Trip to Tallahassee

This morning we drove the seventy plus miles to Tallahassee to visit our friends Danny and Gail. We have been friends for many years (Gail proceeded me as President of the National Rural Health Association - NRHA). Even though they lived a long way away from Washington State (first in Texas, then in West Virginia), we would see each other at national conferences and pick up the conversation right where we had left off the last time. We would also see each other every fall at the Health Sector Assembly in Utah where we both represented rural health at that prestigious think tank.

Then there was our memorable trip to the NRHA convention in Anchorage when we stayed on afterwards and with Wayne, another friend and a former NRHA President, spent another week exploring Denali National Park and the Fairbanks area.

We were fortunate this trip that we were able to meet up, as Gail and Danny had just returned on Monday from a trip to Venice, Italy where they were celebrating Gail's 60th birthday. We spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting, catching up and taking a long walk around their neighborhood. While we we were out walking, the power in their area went out, so we returned to the house in the dark. It came back on in time to fix a very good dinner of lamb steaks, collard greens and roasted yams. We finished off the evening by watching the first half of the Republican Iowa debate before we made the long drive back to Auntie Violet.