Lake Michicgan Trip Part One

So, back from our week-long vacation up to Lake Michigan! We left Friday afternoon after lunch (I'd worked some extra the other days of the week to take the afternoon off). First we drove up to St. Louis. When we got into town our first stop was Park Chop Suey to pick up some St. Paul sandwiches. We took them over the river out past East St. Louis to the Cahokia Mounds and went up to the top of the big mound and ate them up there. There are these stairs to get up to the top. There was a guy running up and down them over and over (in much better shape than us!). The view up there was pretty great. Then we drove back into the city and got some "toasted ravioli" (I guess that sounded better than "fried ravioli"), I don't remember the place's name. We ate it in the car watching the neighborhood. Then we went and found Vintage Vinyl and I got a few cds: Bogdan Raczynski: Myloveislove; Cecil Taylor: Cell Walk for Celeste; Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet: Dim the Lights, Chill the Ham; and Radiohead: Kid A Mnesia. Then sleep at a Motel 6 (it was our only crappy hotel/motel for the trip, it was alright, the bed was uncomfortable though, I had been running on a sleep deficit for almost a week before this and did not make it up that night). We got up and had breakfast at Southwest Diner (it was good, southwestern-themed breakfast that happens to be on Southwest Ave.).

Then we made the drive up into Chicago. First place we stopped, coming up through the south side, was Calumet Fisheries, this shack on a drawbridge that has smoked fish. And we got some smoked fish and ate it in the car and it was delicious! Then we hit the strip and made it to some stores but every place had shortened their hours and closed much earlier than expected. I first made it into Reckless but I was rushed because I ended up only having a few minutes. But I did okay, I guess!: Coil: Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil; The Hafler Trio: I Never Knew Thats Who You Thought You Were; The Body and Big|Brave: Leaving None but Small Birds; Rapoon/Cisfinitum: Mental Travellers; Nurse with Wound: Shipwreck Radio Volume One: Seven Sonic Structures from Utavær; Eugene Chadbourne: There'll Be No Tears Tonight; Merzbow: Doors Open at 8 AM; and Harry Partch: The Harry Partch Collection • Volume 2. Then I made it over to Myopic which was also closing earlier than expected. But again, I got some books: The Questionnaire by Jiří Gruša (which I already have, oops!, once again different versions by different publishers threw me off!); The Door by Magda Szabó; Greed by Elfriede Jelinek; But for the Lovers by Wilfrido D. Nolledo; American Woman by Susan Choi; A Night at the Movies by Robert Coover; The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet; and Sleeping on Jupiter by Anurandha Roy (and yes, I DID mix up the writer's name with Arundhati Roy so I have no idea what I've gotten into with this one!). Anyway, with things closing earlier than expected, we were at least able to make it to our motel at a decent hour and get caught up on sleep. It was called Regal Inn and it was surprisingly nice. Comfortable beds and we slept well. We stopped for breakfast at Little Goat Diner (a favorite spot).

Then we headed out up through Michigan along the lake. On our way to our destination, we made a few stops at beaches along the way up. Mostly around Manistee, if I recall correctly. Mary Beth got out and swam and I hung out these times. Had sandwiches at Shipwreck Cafe on the way. And then we made it up to our motel, the M22 Inn in Glen Arbor, tiny little tourist town but near the park and beaches we were going to. There was a nice little market next to our motel and we picked up some sandwiches and stuff there. I got really into the Black Cherry Vernors soda and drank as much as I could while we were in Michigan. We had dinner at this place right around the corner (well, I guess everything was) called Cherry Public House. Food was good, you did all the ordering online through a scanned qr code which was kinda weird but okay. Yeah, lots of cherry-themed foods on this trip! (I was definitely all for that!) Okay, so I'm going to break this up here and continue in another post!

Lake Michicgan Trip Part Two

So now we're on the second day of our stay at our destination (or the first full day). By now this is Monday. We had our first big beach day. We set out at hit up the beaches towards the south. We'd brought along this nice, VERY portable tent to set up and I could hang out in it and not get sunburned! It turned out pretty successful, I think. And the tent's very lightweight and just pops out all set up when you open it (getting it to fold back in is a bit tricky, but usually not difficult once you've figured it out). Mostly I just hung out in the tent while Mary Beth swam, sometimes reading, sometimes just relaxing and feeling the breeze blow into the tent. At one of the beaches, I overheard a conversation from a nearby family with a teenage kid talking about how hard high school has been, him being a nerd and all that (I think talking to a younger relative maybe about to enter high school, his voice is the one that carried so I'd mostly just hear what he was saying). Anyway, lots of talk about what subjects he likes and doesn't and then at the end he started talking about movies and 2001: a Space Odyssey and Stanley Kubrick in general. So it was a little heartwarming nerdy conversation. Then I think at the next beach or the one after that, I overheard some little girls talking and I completely missed what came before so I have no context for this, but I know it doesn't need it. One said to the other along the lines of "you can tape your butthole shut...or you could glue it" and the other, younger-sounding replied "Why would you glue your butthole shut?" At the last beach we went to I got in the water and swam too. Then back to town. Wait, or did we do the Shipwreck Cafe this day? Yeah, we probably did eat there this day. But now I don't remember what we did for lunch the day before. Or I'm just mixed up on these details. So I had forgotten to pack my sandals, I thought they were already in beach bag but just had flip flops. After the first day of flopping through sand we went looking in a few of the shops in the town for sandals. Finally found some in the last of three that looked like they might. They were more expensive than I was hoping for and they had these straps that seemed like they might cut into or blister my feet, kinda similar to seatbelt material, but I figured I'd try 'em out and they ended up being a great investment. They actually ended up being pretty comfortable and I was able to walk in the sand better. So then we had Cherry Public House for dinner again. Well, there was some awkwardness this time. The first time we got in and tried to wait in a line but it was the line for the bar and someone said you just seat yourself. So the second time we just came in and seated ourselves. But then afterwards noticed there was a greeter that day and he was seating people. Promise we were just confused given what went down the day before and we weren't trying to break protocol!

Okay, the next day was another swimming day but this time we went to beaches to the north. The first beach we got to, at first, we were the only people there and it was nice and isolated. And once again I swam at the last beach. We took a little hike up to Pyramid Point, on a dune cliff with a great view of the ocean. One of the places with a sign about how it's harder to climb up than down and how people have to be rescued and stuff. So we didn't climb down! We also had more smoked fish at a little shack called Carlson's Fishery in Leland. Okay, I see I did get dinners mixed up. Okay, the night we arrived in (Sunday), we had some deli kinda salad thingies we got from the market. Then on Monday night (first beach day) we ate at Cherry Public House for the first time. And so we're bumping these dinners up a day. The one in the last paragraph where we went there a second time and felt embarrassed really belongs in this paragraph, for Tuesday. Sorry I confused things, I would have gone and fixed it all up but I started messing up the days in my last post so I figure I'll just correct it like this (which doesn't make it easy to read but then again you probably don't care about this level of detail anyway!). Oh yeah, one detail about the Cherry Public House dinners is that we sat outside and every time, a bee would get obsessed with my drink (cherry flavored root beer) and keep flying all around us and getting into my cup (at least by then I was really finished drinking it, but we were pretty bee-harassed!).

Then on Wednesday we hit up the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park. We did the dune climb. It's two miles each way over sand dunes! Took us about four hours total. Pretty arduous! Most of the uphill is in the starting direction, but there were a few uphill climbs coming back and one that was especially steep and long. You make it to a beach at the end. But we didn't carry stuff for beaches because we were doing that strenuous hike and definitely were not lugging extra shit. At a point coming back, we heard the lady in an older couple saying, "It's fun and it's challenging. I like it but I hate it." We were pretty exhausted as fuck after that. And I'd gotten sand all in my eyes so I pretty sand blind for a while and needed my sunglasses to drive. It took 'em a while to clear up. We ate again at Shipwreck Cafe then we hit the scenic drive in Sleeping Bear park. It was a nice drive and it has a few nice attractions. The biggest is the dune cliff and it has an incredible view. And people fucking climb down it, it's like an almost vertical climb back up. After trudging through dunes all day, we did NOT climb down that. They had signs about how people need to be rescued a bunch (lots of that this trip!). We did some beaches and stuff again afterwards, this time I just passed out in the tent. I think coming back we hit a smaller lake (Lake Glen, I think) with a scenic drive and an Inspiration Point and a little dock Mary Beth went out and waded the waters in (a very shallow lake going out far), there were some old ladies walking a dog around the lake, it was having fun. We just ate sandwiches back at the motel for dinner.

So, the one day we have a scheduled thing to catch (a ferry, so that's not something that could be missed!), we come outside ready to leave and there's a giant plumber's truck emptying the septic tanks and it's blocking the entire back part of the small parking lot. This was also the first time we'd had to park on that side. So we're just stuck until he finishes. Anyway, he finished RIGHT on time for when we had to leave. The times we'd had ended up giving us cushion anyway and the boat didn't board as soon as it seemed like it might, so it didn't end up being too bad of a rush when we got there. So the ferry went out from Leland harbor to South Manitou Island. It's an island that's relatively deserted. Not settled anymore, part of the national park. So there's a few things to see like a lighthouse and they have motorized tours but we opted to walk to stuff we wanted to see and then have time to swim. Mary Beth thought there'd be good swimming on the other side so we could walk and see the shipwreck and the cedars and then swim. Maybe a two mile walk total. So we walk...and walk...and walk. It took way longer than expected to reach the other side of the island. And you have so much time before you have to be back to get on the ferry (or you're stranded for a day!). Well, we went by the lighthouse but by the time we started making it towards other stuff on the other side of the island we were running out of time so we skipped looking at the shipwreck and the cedars and made it to...dunes! Yes, more dunes! we didn't want to see more dunes, but we climbed up to see if we could make it to a beach but no, just more dunes. So we turned around hoping at least we could hit beaches by the dock when we got back. So we ended up having another long walk. At least it wasn't overall as arduous, just long. And we were carrying stuff this time so that added a dimension to it. On the way back, we did run into this nice kid with his grandmother we'd run into and talked to earlier and he showed us pictures of the shipwreck. I was kinda expecting something more submerged but the whole ship is sticking up out of the water, seemed pretty cool-looking! And the place is on this bluff that has a big view. Well, we did finally make it back and yeah, the place for swimming is literally right next to the dock. But Mary Beth got some swim time in at least! Then back on the ferry and back to the mainland. We hit another beach while we were out and then back to the motel for more sandwiches.

Then Friday we made it to a little diner called The Foothills Cafe and it was a nice little quaint thing. We had a drive up to Traverse City for a boat tour. It was originally planned as a brunch tour and was at an earlier hour but that had gotten cancelled and we changed it for a later one around noon. But we get into Traverse City and the timing's divided up a little funny. So we look at the beaches and parks and docks and stuff along the bay to spend time. We see geese and black squirrels (Trudy squirrels as we call them). We make out way into the little city/town area and stop at a few markets and poke around. Then right when it's close to time to make it to the boat, we get a notification that this one's cancelled too. So our plans were shot! Well, Mary Beth saw a shack by the dock with kayak and paddleboard rentals so we did our one unplanned activity and rent some paddleboards. They asked if we'd done it before, we hadn't, so they showed us which way to point the paddle, say it's about balance, and suggest we start off on our knees before standing. Okay, then we're off into the bay on these paddleboards! Okay, I've set things up and I'm going to break for a minute to continue in another post. I've gotta make it to my standup so I GUESS this is a good place to pause before I get into the story! Cliffhanger? Suspense? Uh...I dunno.

Lake Michicgan Trip Part Three

And now for the part with tales of grand adventure!! So we're out on these paddleboards into the bay. It's going nice and easy for a while. It's a little bit of a struggle to stay on the board. I start off on my knees but then I finally stand up on my feet and I'm doing it and not even falling off. Since this was unplanned, it was the one day I didn't have swimwear packed but I was just wearing my shorts and a shirt for swimming, it's fine. But I'm not falling off yet anyway. Then after a while, I get tired of standing on my feet and it's back to my knees. Okay! Anyway, we're out a little while and it's nice and fun. Then we decide we should head back before we get tired. We notice we're a lot farther out than it had seemed. The wind was coming up the bay in the direction away from the shore. The current must have carried us out much more than it had seemed. Yes, here we're getting into CLASSIC story material. Now we're paddling back and paddling back and can tell it's a WHOLE lot harder to make progress against these waves. To where if we're not rowing with all our strength, we're not even making any progress. But we keep going and going and it's a struggle. When I'd tried to stand out in the bay when the waves were a little bigger, I'd kept falling off so I spent the rest of my time on my knees. And after a while, we're at it trying to row our way back in much longer than we'd been going out, my legs completely go to sleep. So yeah, now we're ending up in some Jack London by way of Sisyphus shit. We're out a few hours and we see a storm approaching. Now the deceptively strong waves aren't deceptive any more. We're losing strength and the waves are getting higher and the sky is getting dark and now we can tell using all our strength is just going to maybe keep us from going back. We're not going to make any progress. And Mary Beth falls off her paddleboard and didn't have any more strength to keep going. I'm worried about lightning too. So sitting on my board I start waving the paddle in the air back and forth over and over. THANKFULLY it doesn't take very long for a ship to see us and start making my way. I pointed over to Mary Beth and they got her in and then came to me. Neither of us had much upper arm strength left to light ourselves up into the boat (it's a pretty big one, for a small boat, if that makes sense). Thankfully the two guys who rescued us were pretty strong and were able to help lift us up. They were super nice too. They didn't even make us feel bad for all that shit. But holy shit, we were so lucky to get saved. (And just shortly before that, instead we had guys in jetskis doing circles around us making waves, so a big difference!) They took us back and chastised the rental place just a little bit (I'm sure they were saying things about us when we weren't around, but at least they were nice and gracious to our faces!). Then getting back on shore and the awkwardness with the boat place and they're all "at least you got some free extra time out of it". One paddle was lost but they didn't care. They were probably in "please don't sue us mode" and we're in embarrassed-neophytes-almost-dying mode. And he was all "sorry, we should have warned you about the wind" and, yeah. But yes, we were lucky! The storm didn't end up last long and it didn't get stronger after that first bit and then after it was over everything was very calm. So we may have ended up okay, but it's really hard to see that BEFORE and by that time we'd been at it so long and had lost strength and were dehydrated and still had a ways to go so who knows how hard it would have been to make it back.

Anyway, thus ends our harrowing tale of high seas adventure. Now we were free to eat and walk around Traverse City. We walk down to this place that does fried fish and stuff called Bubba's. I was still very wet since I didn't have a change of clothes so we walked a bit and there was a food truck park next to it. Then we're in there and we run into the guys who rescued us. They were nice again but we were a little embarrassed and didn't want to keep getting in their hair so we cut out back to Bubba's. I said fuck it about being wet. The food there was okay, but just glad to be eating anything at all. Then we saw a place that had mini doughnuts across the street so had some of those (it had a bit of a hippie theme but doughnuts are good!). Then we walked around some. There was a record store I didn't have high hopes for but wanted to check it out. Couldn't find it at first but eventually found it in the basement of a building. It's also a recording studio. Looked like it was all vinyl but I found a small section of cds. The guy working there was nice and was talking to me. I ended up with a few, and I'll follow with some stories about them!: Wall of Voodo: Call of the West; Kuzbeats: Wildebeest & Friends; Crop Circle: s/t; and Disjecta Membra: s/t. Okay, so the Kuzbeats one is something he just gave me when he saw me looking in the local section and said the musician had just moved to South Africa and said to sell those for whatever so he just gave it to me 'cuz he gets excited when he sees people looking in the local section. Then I asked him if there was any experimental or weird local music and he got excited and showed me the Crop Circles thing. Said it was a collective kind of project he was in back in Toledo and we talked a bit about it and other things so I picked it up (then he also just gave me the last one as something else he'd played on). He had a story about how they wanted to sample Devo's cover of "Satisfaction" and someone had gotten Gerald Casale's contact info and reached out (I think back in the 90s) and he replied and said they weren't on good terms with Warner Bros. so to ask is to be denied. He said he had no problem with it and if they ever got sued it wouldn't be from him so they went ahead and never got sued or anything. Anyway, fun story and fun conversation. He also said they'd just randomly put the cds in like mailboxes and stuff. Okay, I also took a peek in a couple bookstores and one I picked something up in (Horizon Books): The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. The guy checking me out got excited and wanted to talk about New Directions. I agreed that anything they put out is generally going to be good or interesting. I also mentioned Dalkey Archive and he agreed but said New Direction's website is better to browse. I'll need to do that sometime! Anyway, it was a smaller conversation but it was nice. Then Mary Beth and I headed on back to the motel.

Okay so it's the end of our vacation and we start heading back. Saturday was the longest drive of our trip but it went pretty smoothly like they all did. We made it to Louisville in good time. We stopped at this place called New Wave Burritos and had some awesome burritos! Mine had tater tots in it and Mary Beth's had fries. I said they were awesome, yeah, real tasty stuff! Then we checked into our hotel which was a Hampton Inn (the fonciest of our stays). Then out to Guestroom Records and I got a few cds again!: Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs; Body/Head: The Switch; The Sun Ra Arkestra: A Song for the Sun (this is Marshall Allen reunion Arkestra, not Sun Ra himself); Sun Ra: Omniverse; John Lennon / Yoko Ono: Two Virgins; Yo La Tengo: Fakebook; and Mono: Under the Pipal Tree. Then we went over to Brett Eugene Ralph's store Surface Noise to check out a show! Funny that the one night we happened to be in Louisville, Nonconnah was playing a show! We missed The Corrupting Sea but got to see Nonconnah and Droneroom. Both were good sets. Nonconnah passed around auxiliary percussion and the audience got to participate! Also, we checked out Brett's book selection (it's very well curated!) and I got a few: The Years by Virginia Woolf; Black Spring by Henry Miller; The Killer and Other Plays by Eugène Ionesco; Exit the King by Eugène Ionesco; and Happy Days by Samuel Beckett. It was a fun night seeing familiar faces in a "foreign" city. We got up and had breakfast at a place called The Café and that was really delicious. Mary Beth wanted coffee from this one place we'd been before but they had a sign that their a/c was out and hopefully would be back on tomorrow! So no luck.

Well, then the drive back home! We stopped off in Nashville and had some delicious burgers at Grillshack and that was as delicious as always ("delicious" twice!). Then to Grimey's and I got some cds: Jonny Greenwood: Norwegian Wood soundtrack; Mission of Burma: The Sound the Speed the Light; The Smile: A Light for Attracting Attention; Tindersticks: Curtains; Tindersticks: Can Our Love...; AC/DC: High Voltage; Zola Jesus: Valusia EP (oh, I'm dumb, I already have these songs on the version of Stridulum I have, but it was only $3); v/a: Cameroon Garage Funk; Moor Mother: Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes; Pharmakon: Devour; and Sun Ra: Ra to the Rescue!. Okay, then coming back home from Nashville was the only non-smooth part of the driving of the trip. There was something going on I-40 with traffic all backed up to hell horribly. The delay would have been over an hour, but we got an alternate route that was hopefully faster to bypass all that shit (but it was a lot of smaller roads and quite a detour!). Okay, we made it back home! And I found even more cds left for me by Jacques: Jonathan Snipes: The Nightmare soundtrack; The Future Sound of London: ISDN; Dead Voices on Air: New Words Machine; Masashi Kageyama: Gimmick! soundtrack; New Age Steppers: Action Battlefield; Mark Stewart + Maffia: Learning to Cope with Cowardice; Armand Hammer & The Alchemist: Haram; Controlled Bleeding: Between Tides; and Seefeel: Succour. Okay! I gave Trudy a ton of pets when we got home. I passed out early. Now it's back to work. It's a nice fun and relaxing trip with only a mild amount of harrowing adventure that now makes for great stories! I probably forgot some shit as I always do so if I ever remember anything else I'll throw it down later!