Down and Inn in Northern Michigan

I am writing this after 1 a.m. on a Friday night, trying to figure out where the time went. They say time flies when you’re having fun, and while they also say that a found penny is the luckiest currency of all, they have a point when talking about time. It’s been six days, soon to be seven, since I came home. I feel kind of like I just got here.

I suppose I should be writing about everything that happened while I was up in northern Michigan, but that’s difficult for a couple of reasons. One, this blog is supposed to be about northeastern Iowa. Northern Michigan has a lot of pluses, but I’m not sure it exactly fits in the “northeastern Iowa” category. Second, coming up here stirs up a lot of emotions in me, and I think if I were to write about northern Michigan, growing up here and what I thought about it, I would need a separate blog, if not a separate book. Instead, I’ll just touch on some of the high points:

-The AuSable River is still beautiful. It is, bar none, the best river to float on in the summer. Cute girls in bikinis can improve the trip, but not as much as cute girls in bikinis usually improve things. After floating down, I had to get out and swim, walk and bob the rest of the way.

-Going for a run on an alternating dirt road and paved road is the next best thing to traveling cross-country.

-My parents and I traveled on the last riverboat on the AuSable, the AuSable River Queen. It’s an actual paddleboat, unlike a lot of paddleboats you see where the boat is powered by a gas engine and propellers. It was fun, relaxing, and there wasn’t a lot else to do but listen for the captain’s tour guide information coming through a speaker and try to decipher his words through the electronic fuzz.

-There are restaurants in northern Michigan with menus that successfully combine standard American fare with Chinese and Thai food. These restaurants are also incredibly easy on the wallet.

-Campfires with your family cannot be beat.

-Geeking out with people is fun and a bonding experience no matter who the other people are. If Barack Obama and John Boehner both started one of their meetings by talking about how great the pilot episode of “Firefly” is, the nation’s problems would be solved overnight. (Personally, I think Obama would be up for that.)

-Getting to use my small pocket LED flashlight—twice!—has pretty much justified the existence of my pockets’ contents.

-You’re never too old to love your parents and feel loved by them in return.

-Sometimes bar food can surprise you.

There’s a lot of other things I could mention, but those are the main ones. Some people may be wondering if I ran into anyone I knew while I was up here. I did indeed, but we really didn’t have a lot ot talk about. They were in their own world, I was in mine, and our short conversations basically established that fact before moving on.