Tattooed Travel

Do you ever look around and think to yourself “I wonder what it would be like to be a worm.”

I don’t know about you but I’ve got the wildest feeling of deja vu.

Michigan, what a wonderful place. So green, so many lakes, so many rivers, so many people who understand that sometimes things take longer than 15 seconds.

We kicked off our trip with a visit to my family in da UP (Upper Peninsula for the heathens) and the first thing Liv said to me on the flight was “Look at all those lakes!”

The first thing she said to me off the flight was “I understand why The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon made you so uncomfortable.” (Stephen King book, girl gets lost in the woods, I got about 40 pages in and went “nope”)

It was so fun being able to show her around the place that I grew up. Childhood lakes, parks, houses, streets, schools. We even went out to see Camp Batawagama briefly. I took her up to see the giant sweet rolls of the Hilltop Restaurant, and showed her how cold Lake Superior is.

After a few family gatherings and some relaxing, off to Marquette we went.

Marquette is such a beautiful place, and I tried to make the rocks out to the lighthouse Liv’s grave. After some close-call-falls we decided it was actually a pretty big risk to her back and my leg, so we turned around.

We watched people jumping off black rocks, I remembered when I first jumped off. It all seemed so scary until you jump the first time and suddenly it goes from “but what if I die” to “I wonder if I could do a flip”

My answer: I cannot do a flip.

We were also able to go visit our Mr Moo at his foster’s house, I think it was a really great sort of closure before we left. It made him feel better, it made us feel better, and it was really cool seeing how well he was adapting to the new environment.

On we went to Mackinac Island! Our time here was short but sweet, able to check out some great restaurants (looking at you, Pink Pony), get some fudge, and take a tour of the island on one of the horse carriages (definitely recommended).  We had a great time checking out some of the museums and blacksmithing. There’s so much history on the island, people often see it as fudge-island but in reality there’s hundreds of years of history to learn about on that island. If you ever visit, I also recommend going into the museums and learning more about the Indigenous people that were originally there.

Just a quick jaunt down to Port Huron for our last family visit. I’ve been to Port Huron often as a kid to visit my grandparents down there, but I’ve never actually gone down to explore Port Huron as a city. There is such a huge array of architecture styles, it’s a really cool place to just wander around in.
We looked at old family houses, explored beaches, went to museums, ate LOTS of food. It was a great time. We found a small castle-house for sale that stole our hearts and had us planning out all the things we’d be able to do if we purchased it. Alas, poor timing and the level of effort of restoring the building had us continuing on our journey. Maybe another day.

Our last stop in Michigan was to get Detroit style pizza. We stopped at a Loui’s Pizza, where you could buy a bottle of wine, sign it, and they’d hang it up in the restaurant. There were hundreds of bottles hanging around, it was wild to see what people drew on their bottles. A lot of dragons, “x and y were here”’s, “50 year anniversary”’s and on it went.

Alas, our time in Michigan then came to a close. We got on an almost-canceled-flight off to New York, and said our goodbyes to Michigan.