In JRR Tolkien's Hobbit there is a song - The Road Goes Ever On and On.
That is a perfect description of the last day of our trip! LOL
We left Cherry Hill in the morning, stopped for Mini-Mike's cup of Joe, and then headed back to Collingswood to take some final photos of the area where the bench would sit, the Sycamore, us, and a bench of the type we will be dedicating. In the final photo of this grouping you can see the set-up of the bench with footer and plaque. Ours will look much the same, only face Michael's house and the road instead of the lake.
The night before we held a little congratulatory celebration complete with spritzer and cactus cocktail glasses. We toasted all of you for bringing us to Collingswood and making the bench project a reality! Mini-Mike joined in but he had a little too much! ;-)
After we took the final photos of the area where the bench will be installed, it was back to the car and the beginning of the long road home. This time we were DETERMINED not to go through Philadelphia and set the GPS on NO highways. We thought we were okay and then we started to see some familiar things like the Benjamin Franklin bridge and.....
Sigh....
We decided on the way home to avoid the turnpike, which turned out to be another challenge due to the fact that the GPS kept routing us back to it in spite of the fact that - again - we had programmed it for Route 2, with NO highways. By mid-afternoon we were tired and rather exhausted (and running behind). Mini-Mike got so aggravated he decided to disappear all together and sent Little Joe to take his place. Little Joe had been sleeping it off in a suitcase for the whole trip so he was in a great mood and suggested we take a side trip to rest and enjoy some of the best grub he knew about -
At Hoss's!
Joe was so excited, he dove right back into the suitcase, woke up his brother, and had Hoss come along with us for a late lunch. Hoss was pleased as punch and the two brothers joined us for some food and hijinks.
"Hey, Little Joe. Bet you can't 'ketch' me 'up'!"
"What do you mean, I gotta eat off of the Little Hoss' menu?"
"How come you get the steak fries and I get cattle fodder? Huh??!!"
"You ain't got nothin' over me, little brother. I'm the freshest thing in town!"
Our adventure at Hoss's over, we hit the road again. We were still in Pennsylvania with a LONG way to go. 
Little Joe begged us to get him a cup of joe so he could keep going. Little did he know, we needed one too! We stopped for coffee again after we passed the Ohio border. It was now going on midnight and we had been on the road more than 12 hours!
The last leg of our journey went fairly smoothly. We pulled into the Budget rent-a-car to drop off the rental vehicle a little after one in the morning.
But the adventure wasn't over!
There was no one in sight. No attendant. No one to tell us where to leave the keys or deposit the papers, so we wandered for half an hour throughout the near empty garage trying to figure it out. Sonya's husband arrived during this time and, in order to spare we tired ladies a long walk to the car, pulled into the garage - unaware that he, we, and our ride home were now trapped! LOL Thanks to David's amazing driving skills (and a bit of dubious knowledge from his younger years), he managed to get us out of there with no dire consequences!
It was quite an adventure!
And so, it was around 2:00 in the morning on Wednesday the 25th, when three very weary ladies finally made it home, mission accomplished.
We thank you all again for your support and enthusiasm for the Michael Landon Collingswood Lake Bench project.
We are almost there!
Is the plaque of the little tree house still at the park for Michael?
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