Returning from Randomness
It's been a while hasn't it? Well, if you figured out the random order of those audio posts then you heard that I was at least alive, and so is David. With "The Waitresses" playing in the background I feel inspired to recall my adventures of the previous week. As a note, the dates of the trip were Monday August 16 - Saturday August 21.
Day One:
The alarm went off at a far too early 7:00am and was abruptly shut off. As it turns out, since I was using my cell phone for an alarm I shouldn't have set it precariously teetering on the edge of my dresser. Well, apparently it vibrates when the alarm goes off, so as quickly as it started making annoying noises intended to awake me from my slumber, it stopped. Then I rolled over and woke up at 7:30 to my cat, who had decided that my neck was a good place to plop down for a nap. Upon removal of the large amounts of cat fur from my mouth, I got up, only to find a household in disarray full of bags ready to be loaded into the car. Which reminded me, I hadn't packed yet. Oops! Although the issue was resolved quite rapidly when I realized that I had been living out of a suitcase for two weeks already, so what I actually ended up doing was unpacking some of the clothing that I didn't need. Well, the car was finally loaded up, the camper hooked on, and we headed out for Michigan's upper peninsula. The time was 10:45 am. Nothing about the drive was really worth noting, except when we were about ten minutes away from the campground and my mom, having no sense of time nor distance, asked how far we had to go. I quickly responded with, "about an hour." To which she groaned and asked if we could stop so she could get out for a minute. My step-dad, having looked at the map and knowing where we were knew what was going on and said we would stop in a few minutes. So, much to my mother's surprise, and to my relief after hearing complaining for nearly the full ten minutes about us still being an hour away, we arrived at the campground on Trout Lake near the appropriately named town of Trout Lake, MI. Camp was then set up, dinner was had, wood was purchased, a fire made, and then sleep followed.
Day Two:
Upon awakening to the sunlight I realized it was morning and that was the first time I was able to just sleep without having to think about getting up in quite some time. It was a wonderful feeling, especially when I realized that the rest of the trip would be similar. Day two was quite dreary though I couldn't tell that from inside the camper. It began raining very soon and would continue on and off throughout the entire day. A morning sprint to the bathroom was made, dodging raindrops. I returned to the campsite as my mother and sister were leaving for their trip to the facilities. A younger person probably near to my 20 years was leaving the bathroom as my mother and sister arrived there. He said something to them that my step-dad and I couldn't hear. Then he looked up at us, thought for a moment, then decided to scurry on over to our site. That was the slowest scurrying I've ever seen. You could tell initially that he was a little slow, some sort of handicap. I don't know what told us that for sure, whether it was when we later saw him banging his hands on his head while sitting by himself in the rain, apparently entertaining himself. Maybe it was when he asked us if it was 7:30 yet and it was just after 9:00. Either way this was probably the most entertaining part of the trip. The conversation with the kid who we would later learn was named Josh. He was referred to as Steve, as I began calling him, until we found out his real name. I don't remember all of the conversation with him, but it had the randomness of a Mitch Hedberg comedy special. There were comments made like, "There are a lot of Indians that live in town, My friend Skip said all the Indians are dead, oh! I know they aren't, 'cause there are a bunch in town." "Where are you from?" (Wisconsin) "OH! Where the cheese is!?!" (yes...) "Skip and I went to the County Fair, have you heard of it, Monroe County" (nope.) "Oh, well they have a trailer that says, 'Wisconsin Cheese' on it, I don't like it, it smells bad, I think they should just get rid of it, I don't like cheese." At some point I decided I had to go somewhere or I may just ask him if I could meet Skip. So I quietly slid into the camper as my mom and sister already had, leaving my Step-dad to deal with Josh and his stories about his friend Skip. He ended the conversation quickly and also came into the camper, where we all just kind of had one of those moments. A "did that just happen" kind of moment. Well, after we all got ready for the day we headed out to the Tahquamenon Falls. As I was told, they are the biggest falls west of Niagra. How fun, they were pretty neat and we got some good pictures, I did some fine video work with the camera. Then we headed a few more miles north to Whitefish Point, MI to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. This place was awesome. You got to go inside of the living quarters of the lighthouse there. They had the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, among many other artifacts and stories of the many shipwrecks off of Whitefish Point. I recommend this place to anyone, although we went too near to closing time so we were a bit rushed, I would've liked more time to look around. Upon leaving and heading back to the campground we made a stop in paradise. Paradise, MI that is, at the grocery store there. I made a call to Tara, and my mom got the stuff she needed. Dinner, fire and s'mores finished the night as the rain finally subsided.
Day Three:
I awoke to what sounded like a hurricane, or maybe a tornado. As it turned out I was almost right. We had 50-60mph winds for most of the day. I am so glad we don't tent camp in our big heavy canvas tent anymore, that would've been awful. But instead we hung out and made sure that the camp stayed safe and secure. A little later on in the day, early afternoon, probably 1:00ish, we headed out to find this mysterious green bridge that we had been told about. Apparently there's a bridge on Highway 2 in Michigan that has a nice scenic overlook. Well, after talking to a police officer he told us where it was and we headed out. We found it no problem, the bridge was the Cut River bridge named for the river which flowed into Lake Michigan 142ft below. It was approximately 205 stairs to the bottom, I can't remember the exact number. It was very pretty, and very very windy. Well, after we saw that and took pictures and I walked through a puddle of urine, we headed out to St. Ignace, MI. St. Ignace is located on the northern end of the five mile long Mackinac Bridge that connects Lower and Upper Michigan. I made a call to Tara while my mom and step-dad had a drink, we just went to see the town and we were close anyway. Then we drove back to the campground, hoping to find everything in one piece. When we left we had decided to hide the alcohol that had previously been sitting outside for fear that Josh might get an idea from Skip to come and take it. I envisioned Skip to look a lot like Frank from Donnie Darko, somehow the connection was there. Well, not long after we got back to the campground and started cooking we saw very dark clouds coming from the west. Bad news. We began putting up a tarp on the side of the canopy to guard from rapidly approaching blowing rain. Well, we almost got it up in time, then it started to just downpour, drops the size of my head I swear, millions of them. I was soaked. By the time we finally got the tarp up it stopped raining. How convenient. Then the sun came out and it was nothing but clear blue skies, though still a bit windy. Then we saw the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen over the lake, it was actually a double rainbow, we have pictures, I'll try to get one scanned on here at some point, it was awesome. The rest of the night was rather uneventful, the clouds and wind came back, and we ended up watching Shrek 2 on my computer. A bit later on we walked out to the beach to look at the stars after the clouds went away again. Very neat.
Day Four:
Normal morning routine. An okay day, not very warm, but not too windy and not raining. We decided to head up to Sault Ste. Marie today. Sault Ste. Marie is a city on the border of Canada and Michigan. We spent a decent amount of time in the Michigan side, taking a tour of the city. I also saw one of the coolest college campuses ever, Lake Superior State University. It was an old army or navy fort. Of course they have to put something like that in the middle of nowhere, like everything else in Michigan. There really was nothing notable about this day, we went into Canada, back to my home country, and apparently we were about an hour late, everything was closed. I mean everything. So we looked at the few attractions that were there, the Soo Locks that connect Lake Superior to Lake Huron since Lake Huron is 21 feet higher than Superior, or vice versa, I don't remember. We returned to the campground later in the day today, absolutely nothing worth noting. Not even an amusing anecdote. Damn. That was a boring day. At least I went home for a bit, eh?
Day Five: (aka best day of the trip)
Woke up a little later, then headed out to St. Ignace again to catch a ride to Mackinac Island. We took the 2:00 ferry with Shepler's Marina or something like that. I know it was Shepler's, there were others, Star Line and Arnold's. They were the three company's that take people out to the island. We arrived on the island 16 minutes later just as they had said, nearly to the second. Stepping onto Mackinac Island was like walking into a different world. A world full of bike enthusiasts and horse manure. There are only five motor vehicles on the island, let's test my memory, an ambulance, an electric company truck, a telephone company truck, and two firetrucks. I think that's right. All other transportation is by bike or horse. There are something like 500 horses on the island, that's just a number I made up, I have no recollection of what the actual number was. I do know that there are 600-700 residents on the island and that Christopher Reeves is the only person to ever drive a vehicle on the island for recreational purposes. We took a horse-drawn carriage tour that was quite fun. We saw most of the main points on the island and got admission to the "Wings of Mackinac Butterfly Conservatory." Where we also got a lot of really cool pictures of butterflies. If we had had time I really would've liked to see Fort Mackinac. It used to be a Navy fort for a long time. The British even held the fort for a while. The other very large thing on the island, besides the 18 fudge shops, was The Grand Hotel. An awesome hotel, breathtakingly awesome. They have a suite that's separate from the main hotel that goes for $2000 per night. If you stay more than one night you get your own private chef and masseuse. After 5:00 every night everyone has to be in formal attire. That means suit and tie for the men, so needless to say we didn't go in there since it was near 5:00. :) Well, after making another call to Tara, we shopped for a bit, got some ice cream, and then loathed not having another day to spend on the island. My Uncle informed us when we returned home that him and my aunt had spent their honeymoon there, and apparently the smell of horse manure and the cost of living in a tourist mecca for a week gets to you after like day three. Well we returned to the campground, the rest of the day was rather uneventful. When we woke up that morning Josh was gone. A pity, I wanted to hear more about Skip.
Day Six: (last day)
Well, today we got up, ate a bunch of stuff for breakfast, and then packed and packed and packed. Left Trout Lake between 11:00 and 12:00. We got no more than 20 miles down the road when we came around a corner and there was a motorcycle turning around in the middle of the highway and another one in the ditch. We quickly stopped on the shoulder and my mom, as she does, bolted toward the motorcycle. It was an older man and his wife. He was up and walking and just said that his ribs hurt, and she was sitting in the ditch, said her wrist hurt and her chin was scraped up a bit. As luck would have it, the person that was right behind us also stopped, turns out he was a first responder in another county in lower Michigan. My mom called 911 on her cell phone right away, after a minute or two of trying to get cell phone coverage. We didn't even think until later that we have OnStar. D'oh. Oh well, the call went through and a state patrol officer arrived and he called an ambulance to have them checked out. We later saw the ambulance as we were on our way again. That was the only real excitement on the way home, other than the solid traffic from Green Bay nearly all the way to Appleton because of the Packer game.
The whole trip turned out to be better than I had anticipated. My mom and step-dad argued and drank, and my sister was annoying at times, but all in all it was a pretty decent vacation. Now I just need to look into satellite internet so I never have to be away from the world wide web for that long again. Now that you're done reading that, go get yourself a piece of cake, you deserve it. Have a nice summer!
Day One:
The alarm went off at a far too early 7:00am and was abruptly shut off. As it turns out, since I was using my cell phone for an alarm I shouldn't have set it precariously teetering on the edge of my dresser. Well, apparently it vibrates when the alarm goes off, so as quickly as it started making annoying noises intended to awake me from my slumber, it stopped. Then I rolled over and woke up at 7:30 to my cat, who had decided that my neck was a good place to plop down for a nap. Upon removal of the large amounts of cat fur from my mouth, I got up, only to find a household in disarray full of bags ready to be loaded into the car. Which reminded me, I hadn't packed yet. Oops! Although the issue was resolved quite rapidly when I realized that I had been living out of a suitcase for two weeks already, so what I actually ended up doing was unpacking some of the clothing that I didn't need. Well, the car was finally loaded up, the camper hooked on, and we headed out for Michigan's upper peninsula. The time was 10:45 am. Nothing about the drive was really worth noting, except when we were about ten minutes away from the campground and my mom, having no sense of time nor distance, asked how far we had to go. I quickly responded with, "about an hour." To which she groaned and asked if we could stop so she could get out for a minute. My step-dad, having looked at the map and knowing where we were knew what was going on and said we would stop in a few minutes. So, much to my mother's surprise, and to my relief after hearing complaining for nearly the full ten minutes about us still being an hour away, we arrived at the campground on Trout Lake near the appropriately named town of Trout Lake, MI. Camp was then set up, dinner was had, wood was purchased, a fire made, and then sleep followed.
Day Two:
Upon awakening to the sunlight I realized it was morning and that was the first time I was able to just sleep without having to think about getting up in quite some time. It was a wonderful feeling, especially when I realized that the rest of the trip would be similar. Day two was quite dreary though I couldn't tell that from inside the camper. It began raining very soon and would continue on and off throughout the entire day. A morning sprint to the bathroom was made, dodging raindrops. I returned to the campsite as my mother and sister were leaving for their trip to the facilities. A younger person probably near to my 20 years was leaving the bathroom as my mother and sister arrived there. He said something to them that my step-dad and I couldn't hear. Then he looked up at us, thought for a moment, then decided to scurry on over to our site. That was the slowest scurrying I've ever seen. You could tell initially that he was a little slow, some sort of handicap. I don't know what told us that for sure, whether it was when we later saw him banging his hands on his head while sitting by himself in the rain, apparently entertaining himself. Maybe it was when he asked us if it was 7:30 yet and it was just after 9:00. Either way this was probably the most entertaining part of the trip. The conversation with the kid who we would later learn was named Josh. He was referred to as Steve, as I began calling him, until we found out his real name. I don't remember all of the conversation with him, but it had the randomness of a Mitch Hedberg comedy special. There were comments made like, "There are a lot of Indians that live in town, My friend Skip said all the Indians are dead, oh! I know they aren't, 'cause there are a bunch in town." "Where are you from?" (Wisconsin) "OH! Where the cheese is!?!" (yes...) "Skip and I went to the County Fair, have you heard of it, Monroe County" (nope.) "Oh, well they have a trailer that says, 'Wisconsin Cheese' on it, I don't like it, it smells bad, I think they should just get rid of it, I don't like cheese." At some point I decided I had to go somewhere or I may just ask him if I could meet Skip. So I quietly slid into the camper as my mom and sister already had, leaving my Step-dad to deal with Josh and his stories about his friend Skip. He ended the conversation quickly and also came into the camper, where we all just kind of had one of those moments. A "did that just happen" kind of moment. Well, after we all got ready for the day we headed out to the Tahquamenon Falls. As I was told, they are the biggest falls west of Niagra. How fun, they were pretty neat and we got some good pictures, I did some fine video work with the camera. Then we headed a few more miles north to Whitefish Point, MI to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. This place was awesome. You got to go inside of the living quarters of the lighthouse there. They had the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, among many other artifacts and stories of the many shipwrecks off of Whitefish Point. I recommend this place to anyone, although we went too near to closing time so we were a bit rushed, I would've liked more time to look around. Upon leaving and heading back to the campground we made a stop in paradise. Paradise, MI that is, at the grocery store there. I made a call to Tara, and my mom got the stuff she needed. Dinner, fire and s'mores finished the night as the rain finally subsided.
Day Three:
I awoke to what sounded like a hurricane, or maybe a tornado. As it turned out I was almost right. We had 50-60mph winds for most of the day. I am so glad we don't tent camp in our big heavy canvas tent anymore, that would've been awful. But instead we hung out and made sure that the camp stayed safe and secure. A little later on in the day, early afternoon, probably 1:00ish, we headed out to find this mysterious green bridge that we had been told about. Apparently there's a bridge on Highway 2 in Michigan that has a nice scenic overlook. Well, after talking to a police officer he told us where it was and we headed out. We found it no problem, the bridge was the Cut River bridge named for the river which flowed into Lake Michigan 142ft below. It was approximately 205 stairs to the bottom, I can't remember the exact number. It was very pretty, and very very windy. Well, after we saw that and took pictures and I walked through a puddle of urine, we headed out to St. Ignace, MI. St. Ignace is located on the northern end of the five mile long Mackinac Bridge that connects Lower and Upper Michigan. I made a call to Tara while my mom and step-dad had a drink, we just went to see the town and we were close anyway. Then we drove back to the campground, hoping to find everything in one piece. When we left we had decided to hide the alcohol that had previously been sitting outside for fear that Josh might get an idea from Skip to come and take it. I envisioned Skip to look a lot like Frank from Donnie Darko, somehow the connection was there. Well, not long after we got back to the campground and started cooking we saw very dark clouds coming from the west. Bad news. We began putting up a tarp on the side of the canopy to guard from rapidly approaching blowing rain. Well, we almost got it up in time, then it started to just downpour, drops the size of my head I swear, millions of them. I was soaked. By the time we finally got the tarp up it stopped raining. How convenient. Then the sun came out and it was nothing but clear blue skies, though still a bit windy. Then we saw the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen over the lake, it was actually a double rainbow, we have pictures, I'll try to get one scanned on here at some point, it was awesome. The rest of the night was rather uneventful, the clouds and wind came back, and we ended up watching Shrek 2 on my computer. A bit later on we walked out to the beach to look at the stars after the clouds went away again. Very neat.
Day Four:
Normal morning routine. An okay day, not very warm, but not too windy and not raining. We decided to head up to Sault Ste. Marie today. Sault Ste. Marie is a city on the border of Canada and Michigan. We spent a decent amount of time in the Michigan side, taking a tour of the city. I also saw one of the coolest college campuses ever, Lake Superior State University. It was an old army or navy fort. Of course they have to put something like that in the middle of nowhere, like everything else in Michigan. There really was nothing notable about this day, we went into Canada, back to my home country, and apparently we were about an hour late, everything was closed. I mean everything. So we looked at the few attractions that were there, the Soo Locks that connect Lake Superior to Lake Huron since Lake Huron is 21 feet higher than Superior, or vice versa, I don't remember. We returned to the campground later in the day today, absolutely nothing worth noting. Not even an amusing anecdote. Damn. That was a boring day. At least I went home for a bit, eh?
Day Five: (aka best day of the trip)
Woke up a little later, then headed out to St. Ignace again to catch a ride to Mackinac Island. We took the 2:00 ferry with Shepler's Marina or something like that. I know it was Shepler's, there were others, Star Line and Arnold's. They were the three company's that take people out to the island. We arrived on the island 16 minutes later just as they had said, nearly to the second. Stepping onto Mackinac Island was like walking into a different world. A world full of bike enthusiasts and horse manure. There are only five motor vehicles on the island, let's test my memory, an ambulance, an electric company truck, a telephone company truck, and two firetrucks. I think that's right. All other transportation is by bike or horse. There are something like 500 horses on the island, that's just a number I made up, I have no recollection of what the actual number was. I do know that there are 600-700 residents on the island and that Christopher Reeves is the only person to ever drive a vehicle on the island for recreational purposes. We took a horse-drawn carriage tour that was quite fun. We saw most of the main points on the island and got admission to the "Wings of Mackinac Butterfly Conservatory." Where we also got a lot of really cool pictures of butterflies. If we had had time I really would've liked to see Fort Mackinac. It used to be a Navy fort for a long time. The British even held the fort for a while. The other very large thing on the island, besides the 18 fudge shops, was The Grand Hotel. An awesome hotel, breathtakingly awesome. They have a suite that's separate from the main hotel that goes for $2000 per night. If you stay more than one night you get your own private chef and masseuse. After 5:00 every night everyone has to be in formal attire. That means suit and tie for the men, so needless to say we didn't go in there since it was near 5:00. :) Well, after making another call to Tara, we shopped for a bit, got some ice cream, and then loathed not having another day to spend on the island. My Uncle informed us when we returned home that him and my aunt had spent their honeymoon there, and apparently the smell of horse manure and the cost of living in a tourist mecca for a week gets to you after like day three. Well we returned to the campground, the rest of the day was rather uneventful. When we woke up that morning Josh was gone. A pity, I wanted to hear more about Skip.
Day Six: (last day)
Well, today we got up, ate a bunch of stuff for breakfast, and then packed and packed and packed. Left Trout Lake between 11:00 and 12:00. We got no more than 20 miles down the road when we came around a corner and there was a motorcycle turning around in the middle of the highway and another one in the ditch. We quickly stopped on the shoulder and my mom, as she does, bolted toward the motorcycle. It was an older man and his wife. He was up and walking and just said that his ribs hurt, and she was sitting in the ditch, said her wrist hurt and her chin was scraped up a bit. As luck would have it, the person that was right behind us also stopped, turns out he was a first responder in another county in lower Michigan. My mom called 911 on her cell phone right away, after a minute or two of trying to get cell phone coverage. We didn't even think until later that we have OnStar. D'oh. Oh well, the call went through and a state patrol officer arrived and he called an ambulance to have them checked out. We later saw the ambulance as we were on our way again. That was the only real excitement on the way home, other than the solid traffic from Green Bay nearly all the way to Appleton because of the Packer game.
The whole trip turned out to be better than I had anticipated. My mom and step-dad argued and drank, and my sister was annoying at times, but all in all it was a pretty decent vacation. Now I just need to look into satellite internet so I never have to be away from the world wide web for that long again. Now that you're done reading that, go get yourself a piece of cake, you deserve it. Have a nice summer!
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