Mood: Aimlessly Excited
Listening to: Do You Call My Name – Ra
HEYGUYS.
Yeah hi. I’ve been meaning to update but I just didn’t feel like it, and then I was gone for two weeks on vacation, which is why I’ve finally come to update to tell about it. Brace yourselves for the tldr; wall of text that may be my longest post yet.
EXPOSITION IMMINENT.
I live in Missouri, also known by the apt nickname ‘Misery’. It’s where I was born and I’ve lived in the same general area for basically all of my life. However, my father is from Michigan, which is a delightfully lovely state – so we go there on vacation fairly often. This was one of the years we did so – an approximately two week romp through upper peninsula Michigan and down through central Michigan, ending in Kalamazoo, which is pretty much where dad’s from. HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED.
ITINERARY
1.From Kansas City, we got on an Amtrak train to Chicago. It was my dad’s idea, to save some driving time and stuff through one of the most boring parts of the trip. And I’d never been on a train before so it was pretty exciting. Admittedly, this part of the train trip was a little less exciting since I was just anxious to get to Michigan. Spent the night in Chicago at a hotel. Got a rental car the next morning and from there went to our next destination.
2. Iron Mountain, Michigan: Itty bitty town in UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan. Pretty much stayed there as a planned way-point/break in driving. Nice little place, but not terribly eventful EXCEPT for one element. Well for me anyway. Not far from Iron Mountain is a little Township called Norway. Within Norway is a tiny little unincorporated community called Vulcan. Don’t roll your eyes at me, I couldn’t help myself. I’ll spare you the picture of me standing under the tiny green road sign grinning with a Vulcan salute. We spent one night in Iron Mountain and then moved on to our next destination.
3. Copper Harbor, Michigan: We love Copper Harbor. Nice, quiet little [EMPHASIS ON LITTLE] town in the UP on the shore of Lake Superior (technically it’s a unincorporated community within a township). We’ve been there on several of our trips to Michigan, and this time we spent about 3 days in a Mariner Lodge cabin there. Fed the geese (<3 Canadian geese they’re such characters) and ducks, got Ice Cream (Jilbert’s RAWKS), rode bikes (and were eaten alive by bugs in the woods), and just relaxed. Left on the third day for the next destination.
4. Curtis, Michigan: Another unincorporated community within a township in UP Michigan. There’s a B&B-ish inn here called Chamberlin’s Ole Forest Inn that my mom really likes, so we spent two days there. Incidentally, I discovered when we were in a grocery store there, from an advertisement over the intercom, that Curtis is tiny enough that a business referred to it’s location as ‘on The Hill in Curtis’. I lol’d a little. Nice little place though. After this we left and crossed over the big long bridge between the UP and central Michigan for our next destination.
5. Charlevoix, Michigan: Town on the tip of central Michigan. We spent one night there as a planned way-point to our next destination. Not terribly eventful, but nice little town.
6. Holland, Michigan: Town in central Michigan with a strong Dutch heritage, as evidenced by the name. We actually stopped there for two days because I specifically requested it when we were planning the trip. I’d only been there once when I was really too young to remember it, so I wanted to see it again. Holland, MI is actually home to the only functional, authentic Dutch windmill, ‘De Zwann’, in the United States. By authentic Dutch I mean that the Netherlands Holland sold it to Michigan Holland, disassembled it and shipped nearly all of it there (minus some bricks that were reassembled dutch style, but still Michigan bricks), where it was reconstructed. We made a trip out to Windmill Island to see the windmill. While there I acquainted myself with some cows from the other side of the fence around a field they were in. They were funny. <3 FYI: every May, Holland Michigan hosts Tulip Time, a tulip festival. Unfortunately due to various circumstances, we can’t schlep out to Holland in May, so I’ve never gotten to see it, but it’s supposed to be awesome. ANYWAY, after two days we left for our last[ish], and sort of main destination.
7. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Kalamazoo is fun. There’s a lot of stuff to do there, but most importantly, there is the Air Zoo, which is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It’s full of rare and historical/antique airplanes and SPACE STUFF, which is very, very exciting. One of the most exciting things I saw there was a SR-71B Blackbird, which holds several absolute speed and sustained flight altitude records. It was really, really, REALLY awesome, huge, cool looking, etc. I could sit here and geek out about it forever but I won’t. Oh yeah and I saw some old cars, the oldest being a 1926 Model T Ford. That was pretty exciting. Moving on, we also went to Milham Park, to feed the ducks and the rather alarmingly forward geese. The geese are really funny though, and are so brave that they will get close enough to step on your feet and such things. It’s mostly Canadian geese, but there was a quartet of white geese that were actually really frightening. They honked loudly and hissed and were generally in-grateful for the bread. There was one other white goose, a fledgling, that was actually really sweet so I fed him and steered clear of the other white geese. On the last day we went to South Haven, a nice little beach town nearby, to have lunch and walk along Lake Michigan.
The next morning we headed off to Chicago to catch an Amtrak train again. This time, since I wasn’t anxious to get to the next place, the train ride was actually really fun, and went by faster than I wanted it to. Worth mentioning was the outright boyscout parade (as in troop, after troop, after troop) that joined us on the train. Apparently there was some sort of huge national boy scout camp excitement going on in new mexico and they were all going there.
Anyway that’s about all for my family trip. This post is getting absurdly long, so I’m going to start wrapping it up.
On the miscellaneous front, I went around updating some stuff on blogs and other random places /unspecific. Aaand that’s about all, so I’m off to bed. I’ll probably update again soon[ish] /famous last words. Ciao!
EDIT 10082009: Fixed some typos I somehow missed for 3 months. Not humiliating at all [ohgod].
~Aurelia
