Hey, everyone. Well, it’s been a few months since I’ve made one of these blog posts. Mostly because… I’ve been back in Chicago, adjusting to domestic life once again after spending so much time away. Today, I returned from a super-ambitious 5-day loop around Lake Michigan with my parents and my nephew. I wanted to share the memories with y’all.

Sturgeon Bay

Early Wednesday morning, I took the train from Union Station down to Darien, where my parents and Dillan picked me up to begin our tour around the lake. We have been talking about doing this adventure for around five years now and we finally turned it into a reality.

We cruised through Illinois, passing Six Flags, and then entered Wisconsin. It had been so long since I’d seen Wisconsin’s wooden welcome sign, perhaps a foreshadowing of the upcoming nostalgia I’d be experiencing on the trip.

Many of the rural roads we began to drive through reminded me of my time in Wisconsin as a kid. My parents used to have a summer house in Lake Delavan, a place where I spent many summers from the age of… seven? to about fourteen. Cruising around the lake on my dad’s little, yellow boat. Swimming in the lake and getting bit by chiggers, rustling through the cornfields, sneaking into a nearby hotel and ding dong ditching people’s rooms. Childhood.

I wasn’t the only one feeling nostalgic. “Doesn’t this remind you of…?” all four of us kept asking throughout the trip. So familiar, and yet places we’d never been to before.

By 3pm, we’d already passed Milwaukee and had arrived at our accommodation in Door County. We were staying in a town called Sturgeon Bay. As we crossed over the bridge in town, I spotted pelicans flying above. WHAT? What the hell were pelicans doing here? (Note: I forgot to bring my camera on this trip… and my phone camera also is sort of broken, so a lot of these photos are from my mom.)

We took our luggage out of the car and went to check in. I lost my shit as we entered the hotel room. The windows were completely filled with a view of Lake Michigan (or, I guess more accurately, Sturgeon Bay?). We were steps away from the water. What an incredible view.

Stepping out onto the patio, I spotted a beaver resting on a rock near the water. Cool! Dillan and I went outside to try and observe it closer but it had fled the area by the time we reached the spot.

After resting for 30min or so, we ventured out to the nearby town of Egg Harbor for an early dinner. (Egg Harbor Cafe is a restaurant my family frequented in my youth, so it was cool to go to a town with the same name.) Choosing restaurants during our road trip was an adventure all on its own lol. About 30min later, we arrived. The restaurant was near the water and had a cute, kitschy aesthetic. Picture bronze mermaid statues hanging from the ceiling… because there were.

Dillan wasn’t very pleased with his hamburger (OR lemonade) but I feel like the food was fine. Nothing incredible. HOWEVER, we all enjoyed the cheese curds – which became a recurring dinner item on our trip.

Afterwards, we drove up to Fish Creek for a moment, then started our journey back to the accommodation. We spontaneously stopped for a cheese tasting which was fun. We tried a few different cheeses, including the “scorpion” which was the spiciest cheese on their menu. I can’t ever remember eating a spicy cheese before. It was interesting, but good.

Back at our accommodation, we sat on the balcony and watched the sun set over the water. We played card games and then retired for the evening. Everyone was pretty exhausted, having woken up early.

Painted Rocks Lakeshore

The next day, we slept in a bit. When I woke up, I was pleased to see that a blanket of fog had covered the lake. A really cool look.
Maybe around 10am, we checked out of our accommodation. We stopped at a diner for breakfast and then hit the road.

My mom’s #1 item on the road trip was to go to Painted Rocks Lakeshore. Unfortunately, time was not in our favor. We’d had a late start, a long drive ahead of us, AND we hadn’t accounted for losing an hour as we crossed from CST into EST.

We crossed from Wisconsin into Michigan, and arrived at our accommodation around 3pm EST. We took a minute to unload our things and then began driving… ANOTHER HOUR haha, to the Painted Rocks Lakeshore. I drove this time, since my dad had been doing the bulk of the driving. An hour later, and constantly on the lookout for moose or black bears, we arrived at Painted Rocks Lakeshore. Well… first, we got lost for a second. But then we made it.

The view of the rocks were pretty cool. It reminded me of some cliffs I’d seen in Australia. The water was super clear and a beautiful shade of blue as it got closer to land. This was my first time seeing Lake Superior, which, as Dillan kept saying, “is actually superior.”

There was a short trail to the beach, allegedly only .5 miles. So we went for it. The signs indicated there were stairs, but… well, no stairs were to be found. Suddenly, the trail started descending somewhat sharply. I was nervous for my parents. Dillan gave my mom a walking stick, but my dad was still chaperoning her haha. After a certain point, I said, “I’m not sure about this – I’m worried you guys are going to fall and break your wrist or something.” We paused for a moment, then asked some other hikers how much further we had. They said not long. In the end, my parents ended up finishing up the hike and arriving at the beach. I was really impressed! At 69 and 71, they kicked that hike’s ass lol.

Once at the beach, I dipped my fingers into Lake Superior. Dillan joined the other kids, walking along the narrow trail on the side of the cliff. My parents decided to get a head start back to the car. Fifteen minutes later, Dillan and I joined. It was a really nice beach with cool scenery. We remarked it would be awesome to spend the day here, swimming, etc. Next time!

Before too long, Dillan and I had nearly gotten back to the start of the trail and we still hadn’t seen my parents. Ruh roh. I was expecting to find them back at the incline. Nope! They had just arrived at the start of the trail as we got there. They were hustlin’.

Celebrating our victory, we drove back into town, where we stopped at a dive bar for dinner. This dive bar was something else. They had Pokémon playing on the TV… and I mean old school Pokémon, season one. On another TV, Bob Ross was painting a canvas. And there was a napkin holder that had a photo of the Spice Girls on it (with cut out faces of staff members of the bar). Talk about nostalgia.

We ordered cheese curds… PICKLED cheese curds, and then our main dishes. Everyone was satisfied with the vibe of the bar and the food. Walking in, everyone turned their eyes to look at us haha. We were obviously from out of town.

In the evening, we returned to our accommodation, showered, and… pretty much passed out.

Petoskey State Park and Great Wolf Lodge

On our third day, Dillan and I woke up early to get a jump start on the day. As is custom, my parents were already awake. We grabbed breakfast at the diner next door. As my parents went to check out, Dill and I went to the beach for a second. It was a gloomy morning.

I had looked up a wildlife preserve the night before and so we drove 30min to get there. Unfortunately, the hike ended up being longer than I anticipated so we only walked a portion of it. We were also getting devoured by… flies? IDK what they were – some kind of demon creature mixed between flies and mosquitoes. The trail had lots of wildflowers around, but the only wildlife sighting (aside from the demon creatures) was a group of large birds far off in the distance. Once we were back in the car, I did spot a bald eagle though, which was cool!

Maybe an hour later, we were exiting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and driving across the Mackinaw Bridge. It’s impressive! To be fair, I had no idea it was going to be such a huge bridge. I thought it was a little piece of nothing. I was wrong.

We stopped at Petoskey State Park. While my parents hung back at the beach, Dillan and I went hiking on a couple trails. There was no one else on the two that we did, which was cool. Dillan is scared of spiders and had me lead the way. It’s a good thing I did, because I definitely caught a few spiderwebs to the face lol.

After Petoskey, we continued on to Charlevoix to see a few “mushroom houses” that my mom had wanted to check out. They were quite unusual. We also stopped at Torch Lake, which was supposed to have a really striking color. I think the lighting wasn’t really right when we were there to be as cool as it looks in pictures, BUT the water was super clear. We all dipped our feet in.

After Torch Lake, we finished up our day and checked into our final accommodation… the Great Wolf Lodge. Cue: ongoing nostalgia. As a kid, I was supposed to go with my friend Sarah and her mom Janet to Great Wolf Lodge. Janet had scored free tickets (or hotel rooms? Can’t remember). We had driven hours, and finally arrived… only to find out that Janet had forgotten the tickets. Or maybe it was the wrong date. I can’t remember. Anyway, we didn’t end up going lol. We went to another waterpark instead. So, it felt nice to finally make it there.

The reception area was a total madhouse. Kids playing Bingo, with a hotel employee reading off the numbers on a microphone, kids running around… sort of chaos. I was like what… the… hell… have we gotten ourselves into? But then we went up to our rooms and aside from the occasional kid running down the hallway, it was fine. We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, which had all sorts of Mexican-inspired decor. One of those items was… strangely… what looked like a bucket of blood being spilled onto the wall. Hmmmm.

My mom gave Dillan and I some money to go play at the arcade, much to Dillan’s delight. Dillan is a total GAMER – so this was 100% up his alley. And for me, well, it felt nostalgic. Some of the arcade prizes hadn’t changed from when I was a kid – like a Chinese finger trap and a mini finger-skateboard.

After maybe 45min, we had run out of money and returned to our room. It was a chill night, but we’d had a long day and we went to bed early.

Sleeping Bear Dunes

The next morning, we scarfed down a few Dunkin Donuts and then drove over to Sleeping Bear Dunes, where we would spend the early afternoon. We checked in at the visitor center, grabbed a map, then made our way to the Scenic Drive. And… well, we weren’t the only ones. The line was all the way down to the main road, and took about 30min to get to the kiosk where they check our passes. THEN finally we were able to properly enter the scenic drive.

It was pretty cool. A few of the 12 scenic points had us feeling confused – they seemed like random pull offs with no view whatsoever. I began thinking maybe they were popular bird watching spots or something. But the scenic lookouts were excellent.

By the time we arrived at #9 and #10, we were pretty much blown away. We had arrived at the top of a MASSIVE dune which led down directly into Lake Michigan. I climbed a little higher up the dune, getting a better vantage point of my surroundings. Lots of cool dunes lined the water. But honestly, the most impressive part was the way the dunes ran into Lake Michigan. It was STEEP. I think the dune is something like 250 feet tall. Maybe 400?

Of course, Dillan being the spry young 15 year old that he is, ran down the dune to reach the water. While I wanted to do it, and contemplated whether I should or not… I ultimately decided to spare my knees. I just knew they would be giving me grief afterwards. Seeing Dillan, as fit as he is, crawling on hands and knees and stopping every 15 seconds on his way back up – I knew I made the right decision haha. Although, I would have liked to do it. Maybe one day.

We stopped at another spot and climbed a smaller dune – my dad joined on that one, too. There was a beautiful view of a smaller lake to the east. My dad told me to turn around and snapped a candid of me.

Afterwards, we drove into Traverse City and got Italian for dinner. It was delicious. It had been a while since I’d had Italian.

Around 6pm, we were back at Great Wolf Lodge. We rested for a moment, then we all went down to the waterpark. Dill, my dad, and I went down a few slides. Then my parents returned to the room to chill out. Dill and I stayed at the waterpark until 7.30, then took showers and went back down to the arcade. There was one game that Dillan won a jackpot on two times in a row, scoring 1,000 tickets. After burning through our credits in probably 20min, we spent another 30min trying to decide what to buy with the tickets. In the end, Dillan ended up buying a lot of candy. And he got me a pair of meme sunglasses which are quite possibly the coolest thing ever (even though Dillan thinks they’re lame and archaic. A MEME CULTURE STAPLE, PEOPLE!)

Around 9pm, we played Farckle for 45min and then retired for the evening.

Return to Chicago

On our final day, we checked out of Great Wolf Lodge and then drove to Grand Rapids for a late breakfast. Dillan was on a crepe kick so we went to a place that specialized in crepes.

After that… another hour and a half to get to my parents’ house. We picked up Gizmo, who was thrilled to see us, then Dillan and I said bye to my mom. My dad then drove Dillan and me home. It took another hour and a half to get to my apartment in Chicago. (And another 4-5 hours for my poor dad to get home. The real MVP driver throughout this trip!)

My mom mentioned how good the weather had been the whole trip. As if signaling its end, dark clouds gathered over Chicago and by the time we turned off the highway and onto the city streets, it started pouring rain.

Mission: complete. Five years in the making, and we’d finally driven around the lake. Yay! Thanks so much, Mom and Dad, for a memory Dillan and I will always remember. Love you.

Reflections

It is bizarre to be writing a blog post again after what feels like so much time. I think my last one was back in May. Three months. I used to do these every week, for over three years. It’s a lot of effort!

We passed a sunflower field while driving through Michigan. I know I keep talking about nostalgia BUT… if you know me, you know sunflowers are very important to me – they are symbolic of my sobriety journey, etc. My parents and I had also encountered massive sunflower fields on our last road trip together, about 12 years ago, right before I moved to Chicago.

I am going down to southern Illinois with mi amigo Levi for Labor Day, so I will probably make a blog post about that, too.
And MAYBE I will be going somewhere for my birthday in November.

Maybe a few more blog posts this year.

More often than not, glimpses of my travels will pop into my head. I’m so grateful for the time I was able to spend traveling. Looking forward to more in the future.

Until next time, sending you all my love. x