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.

Endings

Yesterday, while Calvin enjoyed the air conditioning at his Gram and Grampa's house, Jon and I made it to the Art Fair for its last couple of hours this year. Though we missed our usual rendezvous with family on the opening day of the fair (because we were up north enjoying cooler temperatures) we couldn't let the year go by with walking through street upon street of booths.

While we were downtown we also made it to the downtown Border's store—the flagship store. Borders started here about forty years ago and though it hasn't been the family owned company it once was for the last twenty of those years, it is still looked at as a part of our community. It has been a part of our downtown longer than anyone else's, and it will be missed. I am torn when it comes to the debate on physical books versus e-books. I understand that e-books are an ecological plus, but I love the feel of a book in my hand—the smell of the paper, the softness of the pages and the way their weight shifts as I turn them. Reaching the end of an e-book has never been as fulfilling to me as turning the last physical page of a novel and plopping it down in front of me with a sigh upon finishing it. And you can't loan an e-book to a friend, or donate it to the library. Have I mentioned that we buy most of our books used? Maybe I'll have to set a new rule for myself—if I can't buy it used, buy it as an e-book, but oh how I will miss dog-eared pages, notes in the margins, and sharing with family and friends.

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

Fort Michilimackinac

Faced with another beautiful day and what were we to do? One could get used to this. We made the drive to Mackinaw City early to avoid traffic, but we took the back roads, too, and that's where we found all means of animal life—horses, deer, and even a coyote. I don't know why anybody would take the main roads, but I suppose that's why they call them main roads, and it's because everyone takes them that we are able to enjoy the more rural routes alone. 

The Mackinac Bridge—overlooked by many who think only of San Francisco when suspension bridges are mentioned—is the largest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere, the third largest in the world. Even on a misty morning it is beautiful in the early light, the lake still a dusky gray, the upper peninsula hidden from sight by a dense fog. The land under the bridge on the lower peninsula side is Colonial Michilimackinac State Park, a much better choice than overpriced hotels or luxury condominiums. Visiting as often as we do, we are more like locals in the sense that we don't come solely to take in the big sights, and that means I haven't visited the state parks or historical spots since I was quite young.

The old fort on the park grounds was once the protector of the straights, the gateway to the west, in fact, during that era. Built originally in the 18th century by the French as a headquarters for the fur trade, it was later taken over by the British, then briefly by the Native Americans, then back to the British, and finally was dismantled and moved to the Island to avoid capture by the renegade colonists during the Revolutionary War. 

The site of the original fort was reserved first as a local park as long ago as 1857, and later became protected as state ground. Reconstruction began in the 1930s, but was removed and re-reconstructed, this time more authentically, in the 1960s. Archeological study of the site has been ongoing since then and reconstruction continues. I know it's bigger than when I was last there. And we got to see them working in the current dig site, where they uncovered an animal skull while we watched and brought it over for Calvin to get a good look, but our interest this time was less in the growth of reconstruction, more in the history of the fort, and thereby our state.

We watched them cooking and learned about their meals of sausages, pickled meats, fish, potatoes, radishes, and whatever other garden fare was available season-wise. We watched a young lady spinning thread with a drop spindle. We hob-nobbed with redcoats. We did a turn on the upper walk of the palisade and watched a loud demonstration with a cannon. We toured the trader's house with its pelts and other stock, a church, the priest's house, the powder magazine, and the soldier's barracks among other things.

After enjoying the fort and grabbing a quick bite to eat in the shade with a view of the bridge in the background, we walked the historic footpath along the shores of the Straits of Mackinac. We enjoyed the bridge, we toed the water, and we looked at the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse before we set out for home via a different back route that took us through Wilderness State Park and gave us another chance to swim at our favorite beach spot.

For more information:

Colonial Michilimackinac (and other Mackinac attractions)

Mackinac Bridge

Wilderness State Park