View from Fort Macon State Park, Emerald Isle, NC. September 2023.
As mentioned in a post on Monday, last week I began an unusual period of travel: all of it by someone else, unless you count this day-trip to coastal waters last Friday. The above contradicts the National Weather Service’s forecast of partly sunny, but temps were in the 70’s, and it wasn’t raining. I would have traded Thursday’s sunny weather, but it permitted a nice walk around Lake Lynn where we espied turtles, ducks, geese, more turtles, still more turtles, and a couple of hunting herons:
Great blue heron with turtle at Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. September 2023.
That afternoon my good buddy received his wish, and we visited the Duke University Store to purchase swag. While there we took a quick peek at the chapel:
Duke University Chapel. September 2023.
The cones and barriers in the photo were courtesy of the setup for Game Day, a Saturday morning TV show focused on college football–according to my friend since I do not follow any sport except baseball. The resemblance to construction fit right in with all the real construction which was occurring nearby.
Now we entertain my brother and watch post-season baseball. Good times.
[Note to CIMPLE: all photos taken with Google Pixel 6 Pro. Top two edited with Faststone. Last one not edited.]
In 2014 we vacationed to Edisto Beach, an off-the-beaten path resort area in South Carolina. I was over a year into the Job from Hell (as it has been known to my wife and me). Though this vacation started on some bad notes, Edisto worked its magic. I returned refreshed by a simpler time spent walking, staring at scenes like this, and strolling to one of the dining/drinking establishments at dinner. Sometimes one just doesn’t know until one knows. (“How profound,” says the Editor drily. “Been smokin’ that ganja again, boy?”)
This will be short but a necessary post if we are to obtain closure. Day 14 took us down the interstates to Beckley, WV, where we spent our first night out. For variety’s sake, I reserved a room at “Tru by Hilton” instead of the Hampton Inn where we had lodged on Day 1. If you’re over the age of 50 and like things such as closets, drawers, and enough desk space to plop down all your electronics, I would steer you away from this brand. Similar to Marriott’s Aloft, it appeals mostly to 20- and 30-somethings who thought the dorm aesthetic in college “was really rad” or whatever I should have inserted here to show I’m not too far over the hill to know (or care).
Before we checked in, we dropped by the Tamarack Marketplace. We had visited in 2010 when I said, “hey, let’s explore West Virginia” and even though that vacation offered a very mixed bag indeed, I still managed to be surprised when we circumambulated the center (it’s more or less a circle): “That’s it?” We revisited in 2023 because we thought, “hey, we probably were just jaded by the end of a vacation. It couldn’t have been that boring.” It was, exemplified by my uttering the same comment I had the first time: “hey, I think we’ve seen this already. Have we really walked the whole thing?” If you would like to pay $23-25 for a semi-unique pottery coffee cup or hundreds/thousands of dollars for art, then this is your place. Even the snacks get priced as if they’re works of art.
We checked the dry-erase board of recommended restaurants–yeah, that’s how Tru does it–and found an acceptable Italian place close to our lodging.
I’d entertained the idea we would stop by the New River Gorge National Park a second time on Day 15, but the idea of getting home in the early evening didn’t appeal to us. When you’re headed home, most of the time you just want to get there. We arrived around 2 p.m., cracked beers while we unloaded: luggage-direct-to-laundry hamper; ice chests disgorging their contents to the beer fridge; and all the miscellaneous crap which creeps out of your luggage and hides in various corners of the car over the two weeks you’re on the road. We joined our good friends from around the block and went out to a better dinner than we had enjoyed in three days.
Returning from a vacation satisfies just like leaving. The familiar looks slightly less so, but the routines comfort in ways hotels cannot provide. Cats cling like two-year-olds demanding you never leave again. You revel in about ten times the square footage you’ve had for the previous two weeks. For me, I look forward to the next day because the day after returning is Re-entry Day, nearly as good as the vacation itself. One gets normalized again, processes multiple loads of laundry, considers midday naps, starts drinking as if it’s still vacation, catches up on all the videos cached during one’s absence, and pulls leftovers from the freezer. It’s like a stay-cation; it’s transition; it’s re-entry. Here we go again.
Rain reflecting where we’ve been. Thurmond, WV, near Beckley. July 2023.
I love rock and roll. (Put another dime in the jukebox, baby.) For years I’ve wanted to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and on Day 13 we did just that. I selected a hotel downtown specifically to be near Progressive Field where the Guardians play baseball. On this day our boys, the Phightin’ Phillies of Philadelphia, would open a three-game series against the Guardians and we planned to be there. Having a hotel which was more or less across the street from the park satisfied my first requirement, and offered an extra perk: one mile straight north from the hotel sits the Hall of Fame.
Obviously a popular photo spot–this was the fewest number of persons between me and the sign! Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH. July 2023.
We both liked the Hall despite the thick crowd of people everywhere. I felt let down, though. I’ve been to the Baseball Hall of Fame several times, and to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, and both of these establishments have a more formal visual presentation which leads to a better understanding of the subject matter. I had a great time remembering the various decades of popular music (the RnR Hall uses the term “rock and roll” quite loosely), smiling as songs from big names (Rolling Stones) and small (Link Wray, early pioneers in the 50’s) blasted out of the speakers in front of each display case. The Hall does a great job explaining the antecedents of rock, and it dwells on early stars with entertaining and memorable videos which loop back to the beginning when completed. This last feature facilitates watching the video as soon as you see it; you’ll pick up the beginning sooner or later. Several displays, however, were mystifyingly not connected to other areas to which they chronologically belonged.
One of the special exhibits featured Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back in a multimedia curved display. No one stopped me from taking photos, so…
Of course signature instruments, clothes, and miscellaneous items jam the displays: an electric guitar used by Howlin’ Wolf at the beginning of his career, a 1952 Kay K-161; one of Gregg Allman’s organs with a Jaimoe kick drum and a guitar from brother Duane; a large window display with many items each for quite a few signature acts, such as The Faces.
If you go, be sure to go all the way to the top. Each floor in the Hall gets successively smaller–look at the shape in the photo above. At the top a small room featured short films on four acts. My memory should be better than this…one was Nine Inch Nails… Alas, the others have escaped my porous memory cells. Too bad because I do remember eagerly awaiting a film up there, and it wasn’t NIN. Ah! A second film featured Quicksilver Messenger Service. This leaves two including the one I wish I could remember…
We returned in mid-afternoon, snapping photos along the way and prepped for our early dinner and the true highlight of the day: the Phillies meeting the Guardians. A decent dinner later we walked the one block to the field, presented our ticket QR codes….and heard the dreaded “ANCK” all scanners seem to produce these days when they can’t electronically parse the information they’ve just reviewed. One more try, one more ANCK and the ticketmeister said,
“Oh, these tickets are for tomorrow.” I’m going to need quite a bit of time to expunge from my memory the shock and sadness I saw on my wife’s face. We walked back to the hotel, a lot more slowly on the return than on the approach. As a consolation, the hotel’s TV featured the regional sports network which carried the game that night. While the game started I crunched some numbers: if I canceled the hotel for Day 14 and added one more night to our stay in Cleveland it would increase our vacation lodging expenses by over $350, the cost for one night when the Guardians were playing at home. The other hotel room was on points; no money saved there. In addition, we would have a nine-hour drive on Day 15 to get home, not something we like doing on a vacation. Alternatively we could stay out on the road another night, incurring one day’s additional expense for the cat sitter plus the $350+ for the room, plus the extra food we’d need to eat. We didn’t take long to decide to resell the tickets on SeatGeek. Two weeks on the road is enough these days, perhaps a function of my flying weekly to locations all over America during the final five years of my working life. SeatGeek rubbed some vinegar into the wound when we realized less than 50% the original price of the tickets.
I still can’t figure out how I managed to buy tickets for the wrong day. On the MLB website for each team, the game calendar features large squares just like a printed calendar. Difficult to believe I clicked the one furthest right (representing Saturday) instead of the one next to it. Unless I had a brain fart….did I momentarily think we were going to the game on Saturday? No matter; done is done. This was to be our only Phillies game for 2023, though. [insert crying emojis].
We drank a bit extra that night–and the Phillies lost in a dispirited contest, although Bryce Harper played first base for the first time in his MLB career and made a fantastic catch into the photographer’s area.
Howlin’ Wolf, play a sad song for me. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH. July 2023.
I love National Parks, National Monuments, National Seashores: in fact, any spot of natural beauty will draw me more than most other sights. Don’t even mention “typical” tourism highlights: amusement parks, rides of any sort, sports activities, hanging at a beach, or what’s euphemistically called “visiting the quaint shops of the [insert name here] district”. My idea of horror would be to wake up on board a two-week Carnival cruise on a ship which boasts thousands of guests. I travel to travel, which means being somewhere different from where you normally are. Places of unique natural wonder only exist where they are–one must travel to see them. Cities which superficially resemble all others boast residents who have uniquely combined their histories. One needs to just be with these peoples to understand them, their cities, their culture. This seems simple and logical to me. What seems illogical: spend thousands of dollars to take a family to some Vacation Destination for golf, tennis, horseback riding, shopping, dancing, and just lounging at the pool. You can do that at home for far fewer dollars.
Case in point: In 1997 I announced to my Philadelphia-area co-workers that I planned to quit and move my new wife with me to my hometown, Spokane, WA. Shortly before my last day, a 50-year-old co-worker asked what route I would be driving. I said we would drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike through Pittsburgh. This isn’t the most efficient route, necessarily, and he asked my why I was going that route. “Because I’ve never been to Pittsburgh,” I replied. His response remains vivid 26 years later: “So? I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve never been to Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh lies 300 miles west of Philadelphia. He recently had returned from a fishing trip to Utah. I’m still dumbfounded. How can you not want to experience what represents the cultural definition of your state?
All of this represents my lead-in to Day 12 when we headed south from Cleveland to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Cuyahoga shares a background to other Eastern national parks because Congress carved it out of settled areas. Great Smoky Mountains, Acadia, and Shenandoah among others share that background because Europeans settled there centuries before the concept of national parks became realized in America. The photo below illustrates that. As the park was being formed–I can’t remember if it had been formally established or if this was the lead-up to it–a car junkyard existed in part of it. Many thousands of dollars were needed to clean it up. Heels were dragged. But the beavers tired of our politics, built a dam, and flooded the entire area. Problem solved–except all those automotive corpses still reside beneath the surface of the waters.
Beaver Marsh, south end of Cuyahoga Valley Nat’l Park. July 2023.
Before visiting the Beaver Marsh, we received a great introduction to the park by one of the rangers at the Boston Mill Visitors Center. He directed us to two specific destinations: Brandywine Falls and the Beaver Marsh. The falls were lovely:
Brandywine Falls, Cuyahoga Valley Nat’l Park. July 2023.
Temperatures weren’t devastating but the humidity had us sweating as we hiked from the viewpoint (from where I took the photo above) around the top of the falls by way of the bridge at the top of the photo, and then along the north bank of the Brandywine Creek. The trail leads down and down until you walk along the banks of the creek. Some (not us) take a “side trail” to the creek and wander barefoot in its cool waters. The trail crosses the creek and then heads back to the parking lot. Unfortunately for people in their mid-60’s and in poor physical shape, the trail up requires a lot. We paused several times to catch our breaths (and maybe let the feeble breeze evaporate some of the sweat staining our shirts). We regained the comfort of the modern air-conditioned vehicle and drove to the Beaver Marsh.
Beaver Marsh offers one of my favorite environments: still waters, marshes, lily pads, and the hidden inlets where long-legged waders lurk. Here’s one:
Great Blue Heron, Beaver Marsh, Cuyahoga Valley Nat’l Park. July 2023.
When we got to the marsh proper, we were welcomed by a bird I haven’t seen much in North Carolina:
Red-winged blackbird at Beaver Marsh, Cuyahoga Nat’l Park. July 2023.
Before we encountered Mister Blackbird, we had witnessed a few duck-like birds which have defied my ability to identify them. I’ve looked at Audubon and Cornell using multiple sources for each, and I don’t see ducks which look exactly like this. I think they are some type of teal, but…maybe one of y’all might know?
A pair of …ducks? teals? Still wondering. Cuyahoga Valley Nat’l Park. July 2023.
We gratefully escaped the humid hotness to the air-conditioned comfort of Mr. Lincoln, fueled up, and after a short break enjoyed a pub meal at Flannery’s Pub, an Irish-styled establishment.
Returning from dinner the day we arrived in Cleveland, I noticed statues of what I took to be saints on top of a parking garage across the street from our hotel. As I followed the line of statuary eastward, I saw that the parking garage must serve a church since the statues continued up to there. I snapped one of the lesser photos of my life, then went inside to look up the name: Saint Maron Church. Thus do we learn new things.
Saint Maron lived in the 300’s AD, a Syriac Christian hermit monk in the Tarsus Mountains. His followers established a religious movement after he died, and this movement became known as the Syriac Maronite Church. This church is in full communion with the Holy See (the Vatican) and the Catholic Church. From my readings it’s debated whether the Syriac church ever left the communion, but it’s definitely in communion now. This makes them my religious family since I’m a Roman Catholic. The Maronites are part of the Eastern Churches, what we loosely call Orthodox churches. There are six traditions in the Catholic Church; one is called Latin, what most Americans think of when they hear the word “Catholic”. Maronites were re-established after Islamic rule by the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, hence the official name Antiochene Syriac Maronite Church. Today its parishioners are primarily Lebanese, with smaller amounts of Syrians, Cypriots, Israelis, and Jordanians.
Hitting the road again makes me feel good, even if I’ve enjoyed where I’ve been staying. That Grand Rapids provided a couple of days where I didn’t feel so good only made it a little bit sweeter (even if it wasn’t GR’s fault). We loaded Mr. Lincoln with our spare luggage–one airline carryon works well for two weeks, especially if you pack shoes in a separate duffel–then retrieved 15-20 ice packs the hotel graciously froze for us. Distributed over three ice chests containing a sampling from Beer City U.S.A., these packs would keep things cool for the five days remaining…we hoped.
One week later, we pointed Mr. Lincoln back to Lansing specifically to stop by Lansing Brewing Company. LBC drew me back because of a style of beer I had not known before, amber cream ale. A nuanced difference, surely, since a cream ale mimics a lager and an amber version therefore drinks similarly to any Vienna lager such as Samuel Adams Traditional Lager, Devil’s Backbone Vienna Lager, or many, many others. Subtly different though, being an ale not a lager. Additionally, on Day 4 LBC had offered an English Pale Ale (Wayfaring Stranger) which nailed the style perfectly. I’d brought an empty growler along for just such a discovery! We serendipitously left such that we would arrive just as the brewpub opened at 11:30. At 11:32 we entered, growler in hand, to discover the staff had waited until then to clean the beer lines for all the special beers poured “in the back”. A 30-minute wait. What was there to do but drink a couple of lunchtime pints?
My wife, lovely hand model, displays an LBC Amber Cream Ale. Lansing, MI, July 2023.
Beer lines cleaned and dispensing, we grabbed a case of the amber cream ale, some pilsners, and a growler of the Wayfaring Stranger, then headed toward an Audubon Society bird sanctuary about 45-60 minutes away. The Haehnle Bird Sanctuary undoubtedly has much to recommend it, and I would like to do so except for one thing: when you show up with a pint of beer accumulating in your bladder, a restroom of any sort–heck, a reeking port-a-potty would have been okay–proves a formidable barrier. As a man, I had no issues with finding a sheltered spot behind a tree, but such would not do for my wife, and we left minutes after our arrival.
Our drive to Cleveland proceeded uneventfully, as interstate drives usually do. The highest form of drama occurred when the Google Nav quit talking to me. Negotiating freeway-to-freeway maneuvers in greater Cleveland were made much more difficult needing to read the directions on the phone. Our hotel, one block from Progressive Field, seemed to be situated in a….less than desirable section of town. To be fair, we eventually walked entirely through the downtown area, and I didn’t see much more to recommend any other part of central Cleveland. Perhaps a few tax dollars directed toward repairing the potholes in the sidewalks?
We attempted dinner at a restaurant which looked promising…on the web. It seemed a bit skanky when we got there, and when the waitress obviously didn’t know anything about beer–and the restaurant had little to offer either–we headed to a Southern Tier brewpub a block away. (Yeah, it wasn’t local, but we didn’t care.) We returned to the hotel by way of this historic cemetery.
Erie Street Cemetery, Cleveland, OH. July 2023.Cleveland, OH. July 2023.
It had been a short day of whimsical weirdness, but not bad overall. Travelers need days where nothing goes quite according to plan, yet the day ends well anyway.
Our first five days of vacationing to Michigan delivered exactly what we’d been seeking: easy, relaxing times in places new to us. Only our drive northward through the state had disappointed. We looked forward to the end of our first week and what would come after. After one of the weirdest “Continental” breakfasts I’ve ever seen in an hotel–boiled ham slices swimming in 4-5 inches of water?–we headed west and south, giving the state a chance to erase the boredom of Day 4’s drive from Lansing to Mackinaw City; but…it was not to be. Cloudy weather dogged us most of the day. Road detours abounded, not refreshing hey-look-at-this-off-the-route sight, but more a geez-what-a-crappy-road type of thing.
Not surprisingly for a Friday, tourists clogged the more popular destinations on Lake Michigan. More surprisingly, we seldom could see Lake Michigan even when the map said we ought to be able to heave a stone into it if we threw it to the west. Worse, I couldn’t find coffee–the breakfast offering had been abysmal, and I desperately needed a cuppa. Dark blue-gray clouds threatened a massive storm which we somehow avoided with an end-run around them. Things started to look up in Traverse City. We turned off the main route, and in quick order found MiddleCoast Brewing just around the block–my inner beer compass continues to function eerily well. We thoroughly enjoyed French-style sandwiches and a pint. The way-too-heavy meal stuck with us all the way to Grand Rapids, a.k.a. Beer City USA.
It’s time we reveal a poorly kept secret: I’m a beerhound. I’ll detail my long history with beer another time. It’s enough today to acknowledge my on again/off again streaks of brewing beer at home over 15 years, the refrigerator purchase ten years ago for the sole purpose of holding more than 12-24 bottles of beer, and that when I packed our car for this trip I put the suitcases in the back seat of Mr. Lincoln because the three ice chests in the rear of the vehicle precluded putting the luggage back there! In discussing the itinerary of the vacation which had to be reoriented twice, I was left with the question, “what do we do after two or three days in Grand Rapids?” It didn’t seem like the one to two days left could be put to good purpose by visiting greater Detroit (sorry, CIMPLE), when it finally hit me about the same time as my wife: just stay in GR. Visit more breweries. See more sights. LRR.
Saturday, Day 7, we drove meanderingly into central GR, aborted the idea of trying to get to Belknap Lookout in Belknap Park when we saw about a thousand Goths all lined up to get into some concert/event there, spent about 30-45 minutes trying to find a place to park, then began an aimless trek from sight to sight. GR has retained many of its old brick buildings to its credit. However, its modern architecture, while striking, jars the eye as one looks past a 19th-century church. Not having recovered from the previous day’s food, (or perhaps from having killed a growler purchased in Mackinaw City), I spent this day in shaky fashion. I took only a few photos, and we stopped a couple of times to “refresh” ourselves: first, at the Brick and Porter then at Grand Rapids Brewing Company. Dinner? Overpriced and gimmicky–I won’t mention the firm’s name.
The ubiquitous, elusive frogs of Calvin Ecosystem Preserve & Native Gardens, Grand Rapids, MI. July 2023.
Our worship Sunday morning occurred at the Calvin Ecosystem Preserve & Native Gardens just up the road a bit from our hotel. Calvin University is a Christian school more than 125 years old, founded as a theological seminary. These frogs were amazingly frustrating. We could hear them everywhere from the moment we walked by the first pond, but we couldn’t see any. We heard them arepeatedly on our walk. Finally, we stopped where the path went over a very small creek, relaxed, spent some time, focused, and there they were! Everywhere. Everywhere! Just in this one small area were at least two dozen. They sounded like a belch crossed with a bullfrog’s deep ba-rumph.
Having fulfilled our quota of tourist-y activities, we repaired to Mitten Brewing Company for a few tastes, then srove to the outskirts of GR to Perrin’s brewery. The latter introduced me to the black ale style, a very nice discovery. We ended at Brass Ring for some of the best versions of English-style ales I’ve enjoyed and traditional English pub fare. Unfortunately, something didn’t agree with me–likely the food–and I spent more than half of Monday in bed. Our truncated day followed in similarly disappointing fashion. Not having learned our lesson on Friday, we drove west on a boring state highway hoping to catch a few sights of Lake Michigan, but all we saw were resort houses and buffer zones of trees. Topping it off, we drove to Holland expressly to visit the New Holland Brewing Company which Google told us was open on Mondays. It is…to people who have business to discuss with the brewery. To the casual beer drinker, however, they are not open, referring them to one of several brewpubs. One was back in Grand Rapids. Of course.
We put a feeble but valiant effort in at the end of the afternoon, visiting Brewery Vivant and stopping by Harmony Brewing only to walk out again due to the weird vibes and poor customer service. You know it’s been a poor day when dinner at the hotel sounds like a good idea. At least the food was decent, and the service was even better.
Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI. July 2023.
Our last day in Grand Rapids ended well. Just a few miles up the road from our hotel we visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. A huge, impressive site: though we spent two to three hours there, we never saw much of the sculpture. We decided to focus on the nature and see the sculpture another day. I’m going to reserve most photos to appear later, but here are a few:
Mute swan, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI. July 2023.Japanese tea garden, Fredrik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI. July 2023.Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI. July 2023.
After this lovely start to the day, we took pause before heading out to a large beverage store. Our trips to local establishments had proven disappointing when it came to “collecting specimens”; this trip more than filled our three coolers. Beers from all over Michigan were in the cart, as well as a few from Indiana and Illinois, plus a couple breweries which don’t distribute to North Carolina (or do so minimally)–North Coast Brewing from California and Alaskan from Juneau, AK. A refined dinner at Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant capped a delightful day.
Dawning sun over Bois Blanc Island and Lake Huron, due east from Mackinaw City, MI. July 2023.
On Day 5 we found ourselves in Mackinaw City because I wanted to visit Mackinac Island, primarily because my parents had visited there some decades ago and raved about it. Mackinac Island prohibits cars (although they cleverly hide the internal combustion-powered snow removal equipment). Transportation occurs on feet, horseback, or some form of a bicycle/tricycle. While there we observed a plumber cycling through the woods with a little trailer carrying his tools. When planning the trip I had rearranged part of it to avoid being there over a weekend. When we viewed the crowds on a July Thursday it seemed a well-thought idea.
One travels to Mackinac Island primarily by ferry (unless one owns a boat or is rich enough to fly to the tiny airport). Two ferry services exist, both privately owned. Ours ran different types of boats at different times; like many things having to do with Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island, little explanation was offered. My supposed purchase of ferry tickets when I booked the hotel turned out to be so much nothingness: we were told on check-in to let them know if/when we wanted to ‘activate’ that purchase. When we did so and got to the ferry dock, we got in a very small line to enter the waiting area for the ferry, only to be told that we only had vouchers which needed to be redeemed for actual tickets. That line serpentined like a badly organized TSA check-in. Bottom line: just go buy a ticket, the voucher system only added 15-30 minutes to the process. Our particular ferry took an extra five minutes to motor north and westward at the beginning of its voyage so that we could pass under the Mackinac Bridge–at the time it was built, the longest in the US (or world?):
Mackinac Bridge, MI. July 2023
For an island where the easiest form of transportation is a horse-drawn taxi, Mackinac surprisingly is not small. Maps show it to be more than 2.5 miles long by 1.75 miles wide (both at their greatest distance). We were put off by the admission fees in place for pretty much everything, including people who would give you a tour of their historic house for a fee. Feet are free, however, so we hiked up the steep(!) slopes, eventually coming out at the highest point of the island with a decent view toward Lake Huron:
Lake Huron and the coastlines of Canada from Mackinac Island. Sugar Loaf in the foreground. July 2023.
A “short cut” through the cemetery, a stop for beer, and it was back on the ferry for us. This trip occurred on a much slower boat, but it beat waiting an extra half hour for a quicker one. A fine dinner of Great Lakes fish with a wonderful view really topped off the day. As the sun set, we saw the ‘special’ Pirate Ferry ride coming in. (We never did figure out what pirates plied their trades on Lake Huron, nefarious or otherwise.)
“Pirate” vessel, Lake Huron, Mackinaw City, MI. July 2023.
Continuing the virtual vacation. Day 1 is here. Day 2 is here and bundled with Day 3 which are here.
Day 4 dawned in Lansing. I woke just a little bit keyed up because we were going to recreate a photo my parents had taken of my dad standing in front of the house he first lived in starting in mid-1925. I’ve detailed that in a scant century of weirdness, which I posted in mid-July. After spending the morning doing that, we returned to the hotel via the state capitol building.
State capitol in Lansing, Mi.\\I. July 2023.
With both the students and legislators apparently on break, Lansing seemed to be a ghost town. We noted some architecturally interesting buildings…
Boji Tower, downtown Lansing. I believe this was/is where the state senators meet or have offices. Lansing, MI, July 2023.
…and crossing the Grand River we resupplied and headed north to Mackinaw City.
The Grand River, downtown Lansing, MI. July 2023.
If Day 3 gifted us with the joys of road tripping, Day 4 erased those good vibes with its monotony. As noted before, US-127 changes its stripes in Michigan showing a real wannabe-a-freeway side. No decorous farms noted our passing. The road barreled past interchanges promising to take us to where most of the little towns and cities apparently went to hide when the concrete came through. Finally the highway gives up altogether, joining I-75 for the final 90 miles or so to Mackinaw City. I made a seemingly boneheaded maneuver when I missed a detour route–road construction occurred everywhere but was especially prevalent in Michigan–and in a sudden panic, turned us onto a “no re-entry” road. The ensuing journey back to I-75 turned out to be the best part of the trip as we were shunted all over the upper tip of the peninsula through small towns and beside pretty lakes before popping out on the streets of Mackinaw City.
Michigan’s road travels seemed particularly boring. Maybe we just weren’t in the right mood. On this day the weather was overcast all day. We don’t like interstates and other controlled access roads except when we’re in a hurry, and on then we usually hate them anyway due to the gridlock traffic jams slowing us down. Looking with Google Earth shows me plenty of lovely forested road in the latter part of our route. Did we just get jaded by then? No matter. We arrived with relief to our hotel in Mackinaw City, the Hamilton Inn where the delightful all-Jamaican staff welcomed us warmly. Yes, all Jamaican. We learned that evening about how one family owns most of the hotels and restaurants in town. We’re not sure if it goes that far, but the Michigan Attorney General’s office probed those businesses a couple years ago and a Public Radio article mentioned at least 20 hotels being owned by the family. We were directed to restaurant across the street where staff also appeared to be Jamaican for the most part. Interesting…
all the voices in my head 