Wanderlust subsides…
// July 30th, 2006 // personal, travel
Well, my vacation is just about over. Tomorrow I head back to work. A quick recap of my week:
MONDAY
Went to MotorCity Casino to claim my free folding chair, then decided that the perfect place to use a folding chair would be the beach. Started to head north, and came to Saginaw Bay State Park. Took a stroll on a nice boardwalk to the beach, but as I got closer to the water, my sandal sunk an inch or so into the sediment. Very yucky. The water was rather stagnant as well, so I decided it would be best to stay on the beach and read for a while. Afterwards, my desire to swim hadn’t gone away, so I went further north to Tawas Point State Park in East Tawas. Looked at the lighthouse for a bit, walked on the trails, and went swimming in Lake Huron. I was amazed by how few people were on the beach! By 6:30 ~ 7:00p, there wasn’t a soul on the beach besides myself! Crystal clear water, soft sand, it was wonderful!
(Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cchoffme/ )
TUESDAY
Didn’t do too much, too warm out. Wandered around town looking for cables, video cards, and such to hook my desktop up to the TV. That way I could watch movielink movies and the digitalfreepress on the TV instead of my computer monitor (which appears to be losing a row of pixels since the move out here, sad). Had terrible luck with the AverKey product, but the video card I had in the PC from back in January ended up having a s-video port which worked really well once I figured out how to activate it and get the resolution set properly.
WEDNESDAY
Went to the Detroit Institute of Arts and saw their “best of” works (the place is being remodelled, so much of it is closed off – they close Aug 1st to continue remodelling). Some amazing pieces of art there. Apparently it is the 6th largest Art Museum in the world! I’m going to have to go back once they reopen and see more. Before that, I was across the street at the Detroit Science Museum. It was a decent museum, but it left me a little disappointed because it was geared to the really little kids – light prisms, fractions with pizza, planetarium with Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, etc. I guess it’s good to get kids interested in science at a young age, but it would have been nice to have a little more for the bigger kid… Saw an IMAX of the first successful water exploration of the Blue Nile river, which was pretty interesting. Headed out to see Ken and Kim afterwards. Ken grilled some burgers, and we played a few rounds of dominoes and dice. Afterwards, he had showed me “ThumbWars”. I had never seen that before, it cracked me up! StarWars done with talking thumbs as the characters!
THURSDAY
Relaxed most of the day. Went to mom’s house and talked to her dogs. As I was about to head home before going to Nicole’s, John R called and asked if I wanted to have dinner, and I can always eat so I did. He and Deb were going to the Whiskey Barrel for the Line Dancing Lesson night and invited me to go along. So I called up Nicole, and we went. I was terrible at it, but had a blast. Afterwards, we went to Nicole’s friend’s new house on Denver Ave and played a hand of Ucker (I hadn’t played since High School!).
FRIDAY
I was supposed to be in Chicago at noon on Friday, but because of the late night I didn’t get out of bed until 11am. Called and cancelled my appointment. Decided that I was going to go ride Dad’s motorcycle somewhere. Thought that it would be neat to ride to Luddington along the backroads of Michigan and take the lakeview road from Muskegon to Luddington, stopping in Montegue to see Grandpa’s old cottage and Lake Michigan. It was great fun to see the state from a different view. Absolutely beautiful everywhere! (see map of route taken under Saturday). I got to Montegue at 7p, but there was a classic car show going through the town and they had the road blocked off (until 10p, I was told). So I tried to find an alternate route, and got a little lost. Ended up getting to Norton Shores (south of where I was) at 10:30p. Decided to check into a hotel for the night.
SATURDAY
Woke up at 8a to go find the route that I wanted to take, turned on the weather, and found that the forecast for the day didn’t look so good. Bad storms to hit Grand Rapids by 2p, Lansing by 3:30p, so I decided to head back. More and more beautiful scenery! Got back at 12:30p, didn’t get quite as lost this time around.
Route taken: http://www.cchoffme.com/weblog/072806trip.JPG (1 is start, 32 is end)
SUNDAY
Stayed in PJ’s for most of the day, read some more, watched the Sunday news shows, and cooked a little food. Doing some laundry, and about to head to bed. Hopefully I remember to wake up tomorrow morning for work…
