It's not as late as I think it is

Maybe it's the strange weather this year, or maybe it's that, in previous years, it always felt like summer went by in a blink, but this year I find myself surprised every time I look at the calendar. The grass outside is already dormant and brown, the flowers are past their prime, the heat is on, and the drought conditions, but it's not August yet.

During the peak of the heat wave we were lucky enough to be enjoying a previously planned week-long vacation, but while we were there are dogs were stuck in our house with the dog sitter, who had express permission to actually use our A/C, except that, one day after the hottest day thus far, it broke. We came home to a house that was 90 degrees and humid, and that makes a body sluggish. Plus any time we return from a vacation I find myself woefully unprepared for real life. So far I have yet to get up and run—it's been too hot even at 7am anyhow—and we're only just getting to the laundry today, five days after our return.

Some lazing is good. I'd call it summer hibernation, if we didn't have to save that term for our mid-winter ennui. And actually, it's different from that funk, because it's not a lack of interest, it's a lack of impetus. We're reading, we're dancing in the sprinklers, we're playing games, we're taking afternoon naps. I think, though, that it's time to pull our heads out of the sand—or towels, as the case may be—and get back to something, if I could just remember what that something is.

Falling in love with home again

Pure Michigan is a tourism ad campaign. I live here, so they don't need to sell it to me, but how often it is that we overlook our own homes when planning trips, as though we must go far to find things that are worthy of exploration and enjoyment. I have often taken our home state for granted. Jon and I have traveled much of our continental country together, and everywhere you look there are things to explore, things to love, the same being true close to home. We have often vacationed in northern lower Michigan, but this trip was about really falling in love with it again, not just calling it home. It was about revisiting old haunts and inviting Calvin to love them with us.

It doesn't take more than a moment relaxing on one of the sandy beaches in the breeze of the big lake, or traipsing through the dunes, or hiking through a woods along a crystal stream, to understand the meaning of the Pure Michigan ad campaign. All that water, the blue sky, the floating clouds, the deep green forests, the rolling farm lands with their road side stands and farmers markets bursting with colors, smells, and flavors. All that white sand molded into the art of the dunes, decorated with bright green beach grass. All that history.

This trip was definitely about falling in love with our home again, and it was an easy affair to rekindle. Tomorrow we return home, to higher temperatures and a traffic congested city in the days of the Art Fair, and really I'm looking forward to that also, because it is home as well.

More:

Pure Michigan

The Mackinac Bridge

Mackinaw City

Sturgeon Bay

All about weather

Calvin wanted not a day of vacation to go by without swimming, so with rain in the forecast we set out early this morning to the nearby state park shore on Little Traverse Bay. We'd already been to the even closer beach in Harbor Springs so we decided that the slightly longer drive was worth the chance for variety. That slightly longer drive meant that we were soaking up sand and the last few rays of sun on the innermost part of the bay when the storms started to make their way inshore.

Watching a storm roll in over the water is fantastic—seeing the clouds travel toward you and the curtain of rain slowly draw in and obscure the details across the water. We'd gotten in a good hour of swimming and digging in the sand, so as the sky darkened we packed up our things and decided to watch the progression from the car.

Just as the rains hit and the little town of Harbor Springs became hidden from view we left the park and drove around the bay, directly through the storm, arriving in Harbor in time to watch it head further inland, moving away from us now that we were on the other side of the bay.

And that was a moment of weather discovery made all the more enjoyable by the fact that we'd already done our swimming, and by the return of the sun not even an hour later.

More:

Petoskey State Park

Little Traverse Bay

Harbor Springs

Petoskey

Into our vacation a little rain falls

From our retreat in Northern Michigan I've been watching the heat wave hit the southern half of our lower peninsula. Every time I visit my home weather bookmark online I am bombarded with bright red and orange warnings: "heat advisory," "air quality alert," "excessive heat watch." I'm not sure how all these are different, but they make me even more thankful to be on vacation, a trip that was planned when the temperatures at home were still in the 80s, the kind of days we are enjoying here now.

Blue skies, intermittent clouds, a soft breeze to cool our warm days, I wish I could share them with the friends, family, and pets we left at home. And the rain we got today—sweeping in with showers and sprinkles, sending us to town to enjoy books stores and adventure golf before sweeping back out again in the evening—that rain would have been appreciated at our house, too. We didn't mind it here either, though. It gave us a break from the sun, a chance to play golf, some reading time at the house, naps, daydreams. These are the traditions from my own childhood vacations in this area, and we're soaking up as much of this relax time as possible.

For more information:

Petoskey (Chamber of Commerce)

Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf

Vacation, take 3

Going to bed full of sun, full of discoveries, full of good food, full of rest, full of joy. Sated.

For more information:

Tunnel of Trees

Wilderness State Park

Sturgeon Bay

Don't forget Leg's Inn!