Although this post comes a little (okay, months) after the actual happenings, I still find it worth posting. I've had a draft up here for ages, but got entirely too caught up enjoying myself and getting back into a new school year. But here's my mini-Michigan road trip with Nate from the summer. It was the one and only true road trip I've ever taken, and I'm afraid that it was so terribly entertaining, that I'll never top it. But. High hopes. We first stopped just for dinner in Grand Rapids, MI and took a little walk around the town. Who knew such a lovely little gem awaited us on our walk. An ode-to-cacti on this overhang. In every color and size pot you can imagine. Luckily, they don't need to be watered, because I'm not sure how anyone would get to them safely...
We dined in a restaurant where I could (literally) not get between the tables and had to wait 5 minutes for people to get out of my way so that I could climb back to my table. It was delicious. We ordered way too much food and ate nearly all of it before promptly jumping back into the car to continue on.
Our first full day was spent in Holland. Named so, presumably, for it's Dutch-like atmosphere. The windmill was the cutest, but in order to go up it, you had to get a tour with some fairly strange tweens posing as the opposite gender and wearing wooden clogs. So. We opted out. We did, however, watch them dance around. I enjoyed their performance thoroughly, though I did say more than one time "Is this real life?" It included slow-motion spins, dips, and clog clapping that I think Nate and I could have managed if we had a few minutes practice.
Nate just had to try them on. Don't be fooled by his calf muscles. He is not, in fact, a Dutch dancer, though the shoes fit him nicely.
The carousel was labeled "CHILDREN ONLY", and we would have attempted it, had the animals not looked so breakable. Instead, we played on the playgroud and snuck into the children's garden....and thank God we did! The children had not been taking good care of their herbs, and so Nate took it upon himself to finish the job.
On the way to some bigger sand dunes, we stopped to talk a walk on some smaller ones. I, motivated by sand too hot to touch, raced to the top, leaving Nate behind.
We got to the sand dunes at dinner time, but thought it'd be worth a try to score ourselves a buggy. Unplanned, but so necessary. After seeing car after buggy after truck after four wheeler drive by with their little sand dune flag, we were officially jealous. Just in time, and with a little sweet talking we managed ourselves the only buggy left. This little babe. "The one with no reverse". I was nervous. Nate was thrilled.
We managed much better than I had thought, though we got stuck a couple of times, Nate always got us out. The view was incredible and I couldn't stop laughing. We left with sand in our eyes, ears, hair, shoes, and shirts. We filled the entire car with sand. We had bumps and bruises to show for it. We (and by we I mean I) accidentally drove straight through a huge puddle splashing us.
Test hill. A monster-sized hill in the sand dunes where everyone sits until the muster the courage to take a try at getting up it. We were told "Don't take that buggy on test hill. You will NOT make it". I was thankful for that, to be honest.
Exhausted, and ready for a meal and a bed, we hopped in the car to go to Ludington, where we were sure we'd find a motel for the night. We first stopped to see the pier and the sunset. I'm so glad we did, because it is all we ended up seeing of Ludington. Every single motel, hotel, and B&B were full. So it's 10:00 at night, we're covered in sand, and without a place to sleep. We finally drove 25 minutes back out of our way to a motel where they left a bonfire burning in front of our door. It was one of my very favorite stops. A bottle of sangria each and 2 for 1 cinnamon donuts from the gas station make everything alright again.
Oh, and this guy does, too.
Next day we had hours to kill in the car, and not a plan in mind. Oh, a boat? A huge boat? With tours? Yes, let's. We waited in the sketchiest of cabins for our "scheduled tour" with a family of 3.
Lucky we signed up just 10 minutes before it started. Got the last spot. We learned lots about boats. Well. Nate learned lots about boats. I looked at all of the cool old things like the rotary phones and living quarters and I pictured being with Leo DiCaprio and Rose Winslet on the Titanic.
Our most adorable tour guide insisted we take a picture here. He was wonderfully enthused about every nook and cranny on the entire boat, which made even his least exciting babble bearable.
Only a few minutes back into the trip after our ship tour, we saw a sign that said "Plane Rides $25". The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Plane Rides, $25!"
Nate: "$25?"
Me: "Is that real?"
And the car was already turned around and pulling into the lot to find out. We hesitated at the entrance to the tiniest of airports because it seemed that no one was inside. When we got in the building, we found a young girl wearing pink and polka dots from head to toe, complete with flip flops. We asked if there were any plane rides for the day and she said "Oh yea, that's me. Which one do you want? Okay let's go". From car to plane: 3 minutes. We were strapped in the baby plane behind the least conspicuous pilot I've ever seen without having a single second to process. I think it's best that way, or otherwise I might have run the other way.
The views were great. Our pilot showed us around her little city.
"Did we just do that?" We did. And it was great.
More days, more dunes. This is the steepest we saw. People had climbed all the way to the bottom of this one and were attempting to crawl back up. Luckily, I'd read in the pamphlet that it takes on average 2-3 hours to climb back up, and so I was able to talk Nate out of it. Otherwise, it looked tempting.
Our last night was spent in Leelanau at the coolest motel I've seen. Set back in a little fishing town by the tiniest waterfall, we could hear the water running all night. We dressed way too nice for the restaurant we went to and could find little to no entertainment in the town, so we created our own. We foam-sword fought with a 5 year-old girl in the gift shop, whose parents were unaware that she was being beaten, badly, by much older opponents. We drank cherry wine (delicious) and enjoyed our last night.
But we'll keep trying.
