To Wisconsin. . . and beyond!

Note -- More pics are up!

Well, after much threatening, I left Michigan. I went through da UP, dontcha know, which is a beautiful drive. I had to stop and get a picture of the Mackinac Bridge for the last time (at least for a while), as well as the site of the 45th parallel in Wisconsin.

I camped overnight in Manistique , Michigan. I realized this night one important thing: my imagination runs way too freely when I've been alone in a car with myself all day. I camped at a hotel/campground right by the lake (which, I'm pretty sure, had more customers for camping than for the hotel--you know it's a sketchy establishment when you go in to pay for your site, and the girl at the desk, who also happens to be running the restaurant, pulls a huge wad of bills out of her pocket, out of which she gives you your change). I had a new tent, so it took me a while to get set up, but finally I had dinner, and I laid down to go to sleep after reading for a bit. About half an hour later, I started smelling skunk pretty strongly. I started imagining different scenarios about what would happen if I inadvertently made a startling sound while I was asleep (answer: the skunk would spray the tent/my car/me, and I would be totally screwed, because who's going to let you wash off with tomato juice in their hotel? Plus, I wouldn't want to drive my car anymore because I would have to at least drive myself to the store to buy the tomato juice, thus "infecting" the car with skunkiness, etc. . . . ). The smell mostly went away, but it was still around, and I was wide awake. Then I noticed what I imagined to be the sound of animal-like sniffing outside my tent -- it was the skunk! It had decided to sleep by MY tent! What was I going to do?????

Well, I didn't have much of a choice -- I stayed awake all night. I had no good way of verifying my theories -- if they were true, and I tried to check outside my tent, there would be problems. I tried to go to sleep, but I was too afraid something would happen.

You might think I am kidding, but I tell you, I am not. I am truly neurotic, apparently, when left to my own devices. And this was only the first night of my journey!

Hence the pictures on the lake -- this was the next morning, when I decided to brave getting out of my tent -- slooooowly -- and looked around, and realized that the sound was the sound of the rain fly line rubbing on the outside of the tent (it was a new tent and I wasn't used to it yet).

Also noticed when I went to the lake to watch the sunrise -- a big, dead skunk on the road right in front of the campground, well within whiffing distance. So, either there had been a skunk in the campground, and he had met his doom (hah!), or, the smell had been the wind carrying the stench my way. At least there had actually been a skunk around -- I was only 98% neurotic.

I returned from watching the sun rise (hint: I took a lot of pictures of that -- you don't have to look at all of them) and sheepishly packed up. Thankfully, with a few nap stops, I made it to my grandparents' house safely. I stayed about four days with them, enjoying, among other things, various cheeses, my grandpa's stories about days back when everything was farmland, and sleeping inside a house, safely away from the reach of wayward skunks.

My parents ended up coming out a couple of days behind me, which was good, as far as more time spent together, but also made saying goodbye a little harder -- more people to avoid making eye contact with right before I headed out the door, once again trying not to cry long enough to gas my car up.