Of Surprises and Disappointments - A Very Short (Partial) Memoir by a Sleep Starved Traveler

Very saddening - the line was too long inside so I didn't get to taste a childhood favorite. My UP Granpa always made them when they visited for a month. Always in the winter of course.

We landed in Traverse City, which gave us a taste of another small airport.  After a nice, green, heavily treed two hour drive, we arrived in Mackinac City which was the second surprise. Basically think the Ozarks’ Bagnell Dam strip with fewer smoke shops, tattoo parlors, bars and marijuana sellers. But there were beautiful flowers and interesting scrap sculptures.  It was more quaint and less seedy than Bagnell and a very entertaining people zoo – many of whom were there for the Labor Day 4 Mile Mackinac Bridge Walk. Yes, we drove it.

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https://video.wixstatic.com/video/bff7d0_28f7a5e562644e26acebf69281ab06fb/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Take a bit of the longer ride across the bridge. Hang in there through the upside down/sideways part.

Coming in on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend is not necessarily the smartest thing to do on so many levels. After some hotel room confusion at home, we ended up in a motel. Granted it was on a beach but I'm sure it normally would go for $59 a night, or possibly rent by the hour. But through the magic of the Internet and bad timing, it was over $400. Yikes! The knotty pine took me back a few years but that was OK. It was clean.

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I assure you, had we paid $59 for this place, it would have been fine and taken me back to my childhood with its noisy wall air conditioner and tiny soap. It had a nice TV, unsmart version, from that time too, much to our surprise as we thought we’d get to continue our Reacher binging. Oh dear, had to read instead!   

We had a nice dinner in St. Ignace where we began our white fish (Coregonus clupeaformis) eating adventures.  Then we walked some more along the beach. There were glowing beach fires every 100 yards or so – and us without a match. Or s’mores fixings.

I’m getting to the best part.  Later that night, we learned our room came with a small cabal of horses or camels or donkeys above us, or maybe all of them, which used their room as a race track until nearly midnight. If they weren’t running back and forth, they were dropping boxes or suitcases on the uncarpeted, unsound-proofed floor.  Since we had left home at 5 a.m., it seemed like auditory torture to me. This is where Cutest really lucks out, being somewhat hearing challenged.

The one tiny thing I keep reminding myself of: normally we are pretty fortunate and if this were to be the worst, life is not so terrible.

But it was a great start.