Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: whaling ship in the grey, cold rain

Shawn and I have made this trip to Connecticut (and back again) five times. Once to move Mason in, and then four times now to move him out. We have never, ever been able to see anything more off the coast of Connecticut than mist. I was pretty sure that the whole fog-of-nothingness/evil was supposed to be a Stephen King thing for Maine, not Connecticut, but here we are, our fifth trip, and there is clearly NO OCEAN OFF THE COAST. It is all greyness and LIES.  

But, we managed a fun sight seeing trip anyway. 

We went to Mystic, CT, bringing along with us both Mason and his partner Jas. 


Mason, our grad, (left) and Jas (right) at the Black Sheep in Nantic, CT. 

The Seaport Museum was probably an interesting choice given the foul weather, and, honestly, I would have hoped that pouring rain would mean that we'd have the place to ourselves. No, every school group in the history of school groups were all there, making trying to get into the litttle faux village shops somewhat of a crapshoot. It was a lovely little space, though. Mason and I explored the whaling ship and I got inspired to do a better job explaining how cramped berths on sailing ships (in my case space ships) can be.  

I'm going to say, however, that my favorite thing was seeing a family of geese and their three little goslings. 

And getting to see Mason hanging out with the person he calls "love."

We did not get any packing done today, but the four of us got very moist and a little cross, so it's back to the AirBnB for us. Clothes are in the dryer and my wet toeies are tucked under the covers. We are giving up for the day, with only dinner out for plans. I wish we'd had better weather, but we had excellent company and that's what it's all about.

I am an expert come-along friend.  One of the things I specialize in, as your come-along friend, is a keen desire to see really weird things and to try to talk you into following me on some odd adventures along the way.

Today, Indigenous People's Day, my friend naomikritzer has a gig at a library in Luverne, Minnesota. She and a couple of other writes (though not me) will be talking to whoever shows up at the local library. Laverne is not all the far from the Twin Cities, but the timing of the event made it difficult to make into a workable daytrip (for a late riser.)  So, we headed down yesterday.

I pulled out my handy-dandy Roadside America map and had us make a few stops along the way. The one place that I knew that Naomi needed to see, if she had not before (and she had not!) was the candy store in Jordan, MN This candy store bills itself as The World's Largest, but I have noticed some signs now proclaiming only to be Minnesota's largest. 



Image: Me and Naomi next to the sign proclaiming the shop to be Minnesota's largest...

The internet is pretty sure that the actual largest candy store in the world is b. a. Sweetie  in Ohio. There is another in the running in Dubai. But, the one in Minnesota is well worth the stop, regardless. They have a whole section on nostalgia candies, imported candy, as well as things that aren't candy at all, like local apples, beef jerky, sodas, and more. The only thing we did backwards here is that we probably should have stopped for lunch BEFORE braving the massive crowds. 

Generally, however, well worth the detour. 

Pickings were a little slim on Hwy 169, but in Saint Peter, MN, we stopped at the Saint Peter's Pearly Gates.


Image: A bad selfie of me in front of the Pearly Gates

I jokingly noted that I now have the perfect obituary photo. Though most people who know me at all would be vey surprised to imagine that I'd be standing in front of the Other pearly gates, as I'm pretty sure they officially bar pagans and dykes. What's amusing about these gates is that they're just there to be a photo op. They are next to a park building in Levee Park, which otherwise has a very nice view of the river (the Minnesota, I think.) Naomi, who plays Pokemon Go, was not at all surprised to discover that this spot was a gym and was able to take it over and leave behind a ghostly pokemon. Seems very appropriate, IMHO.

We had to skip the two story outhouse, but did see along the way the last Big Boy and the sign for the Jolly Green Giant.

The final stop was off Hwy 60. It's called Curt's Aluminum Statues. We managed to miss getting in, as they have Thursday-Saturday hours, but we were able to park and walk around the exterior. This is fully my kind of weird place. It should be noted that all of the statues are on sale (and Naomi said she would actually have priced a set of gnomes.)  



Image: The "Oh Dear Driving School" with a taxidermy deer at the wheel, the VW Bug is painted to resemble a ladybug (sort of).

It was a little disappointing not to be able to go in, but we could see a lot of it by walking around the exterior.  

Luverne itself is apparently the home of a large collection of nutcrackers (over 5,000?!) in its historical society. We may try to see those, but a lot of museums are closed on Mondays, generally, and, of course, today is a Federal Holiday (though not one celebrated by Minnesota.)  Their website claims they have Monday hours, but we'll see. 

But, I will also be doing some research for what we might stop and check out on the way back. 

 
Image: Clouds reflecting on the lake

A friend from Michigan was supposed to be staying with us for a few days this weekend, but plans changed due to a funeral. I ended up driving him to Blue Earth, Minnesota, where he was going to meet up with family and then make the rest of the trip to the Dakotas. Since I was already all the way down at the butt-end of the state, I decided to see if there was a state park I could check out. 

The internet suggested Myre-Big Island. 

I didn't have a huge amount of time to explore this park, since I arrived at it around 6 pm (technically the park is open until 10 pm, but I was not equipped for nighttime hiking.) So, I drove out to see the "little island" and then parked at the Big Island for a little tromp in the woods. The first thing I saw was a "fat friend" in the restored prairie near the lot. The muskrat or groundhog was munching on some clover and I paused long enough to try to get a blurry picture of her. (It's on Facebook, but it's really too pixelated to reproduce here.) 

The trail was dark and lovely, full of looming trees.


Image: trail into the woods

I probably only hiked for a half hour, but I got my passport stamped and stretched my legs (which was the real point of this detour.) Plus, I saw some cool, heart-shaped mushrooms.

 Today was not a day for putting miles behind us, as it were, but a day to take in some sights. I fell in love with Pennsylvania the first time we drove through it on the way to drop Mason off at college. The stretch we drove along I-80 is full of rolling hills that remind me strongly of the bluffs and coulees of my hometown in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and the surrounding Driftless Zone, as it's called. 

As I mentioned before, growing up, my family used to send out Groundhog's Day cards, and so I've always kind of "celebrated" Groundhog's Day in some fashion. So, it seemed only fitting that since we were passing right past Punxsutawney, we should stop. 

I found this whole town to be rather delightful.

First of all, there were statues of "Phil" all over town, much like there are statues of Snoopy all over St. Paul. The first one we saw was actually outside a Wendy's. 


Image: a statue of a groundhog dressed as Wendy's.... 

If this horrifies you in any way, Punxsutawney is not for you. The whole town has gone ALL IN on the cheesy goodness of their beloved rodent, Punxsutawney Phil. You can see the actual groundhog at the local library, where he has a den he shares with Punxsutawney Phyllis. Here is a picture of me and the statute right outside of his "burrow."


Image: Me and Phil outside his library burrow.


I did not get a great picture of the rodent himself, because the glass he was behind had been scratched and smudged by a thousand faces all pressed in to see him. But, you can view him either from outside or from the inside of the library, in the children's section.

Here is the terrible picture of this world famous rodent:

Image: A smudgy view of the furry butt of the world famous weather predicting rodent.

He looks like he's hiding here, but he was actually busy digging up wood chips. They were both every active and adorable to watch. I can see how they'd be a big hit with the kids. We drove around the town a bit, found the official gift shop on Main Street, and then decided to brave having food at a diner called Punxsy Phil's. All I can say about that experience is that the food was very perfectly greasy spoon and the waitress really wanted these two ladies to want separate checks, even though Shawn very pointedly said she was waiting for her wife, while I was off in the bathroom. Le sigh. This, unfortunately, jives with all of the "Trump 2024" bumper stickers and lawn signs we saw as we drove through some of the backroads.

Le sigh.

We then drove around a bit through the Elk Scenic Highway. We did not see any elk, alas. All of the tourism guides say that if you have any real chance of seeing elk, it's in the fall. So, of course, we're here in the spring. 

Even so, the scenery was amazing, though I swear to god, every semi truck on the planet was careening down these tiny, winding roads right on the back of my bumper. Insane!

The last sight we really wanted to be sure not to miss was the Kinzua Sky Bridge.  This used to be a railway bridge, but a tornado destroyed it and now it's a walk way. 


Image: a very tall bridge. 

The Interpretive Center told us that this bridge is taller than the Statue of Liberty. I would believe it. There were hawk soaring BENEATH us at points. The view is spectacular. They also have a glass panel in the floor of the thing where you can look down (or, you know, if you're INSANE, stand on the one inch thick glass.) Shawn, generally, was uncertain.


Image: Crawling seemed safest, honestly.

Then, after enjoying the sky walk and the amazing giftshop, we hit the road. We had not actually booked a hotel anywhere because we wanted to remain flexible in our plans. Shawn started searching for interesting places and stumbled across the Kane Manor Inn. The inn itself was booked solid, but they have an overflow guest house and so we snapped up a room there. It's actually in a house across the street from the manor, but the room is lovely. The manor itself is amazing and we'll be have having breakfast there in the morning.


Image: The breakfast room.

Anyway, today was a wonderful day. The temperatures never crested 70 F/21 C. I think, actually, it stayed in the mid-60s (around 18 C) all day. 

Tomorrow may be mostly driving? We'll see if we stumble across anything interesting. 

I had been most looking forward to today. We had Mason with us and the on stop I was SURE we would all deeply enjoy was Centralia, Pennsylvania. If you know this town at all, it's probably through the video game "Silent Hill," which took the idea of what happened in real life Centralia and expanded it. So what happened in real life? A garbage fire ended up igniting a coal vein... the ground underneath the town has been burning ever since. It will apparently burn for many, many more years yet before the coal is depleted.

There wasn't much to take pictures of, thought I did snag one of the Orthodox Church that stands watch over the remains of the town.


The Centralia Orthodox Church.

But, there really is almost nothing to see. A couple of years ago, someone covered "graffiti road" with dirt, probably to discourage tourists like me and my family: https://allthatsinteresting.com/centralia-pa

Plus, my family and I probably should have eaten before we tried to find Centralia. We get notoriously bitchy if we don't eat by a time, and we missed an opportunity to grab a sandwich and so by the sixth time that I was turning around on a tiny, narrow highway there may have been some yelling... which was not at all how I wanted this particular leg of the trip to be. I had really hoped we'd get out of the car and wander around, but we ended up turning around so many times that by the time we ran into some other people on one of the side road who were also exploring the ex-town, we were all so fried that we never even got out to stretch our legs.

:-(

But, we made up for it by finding a spectacular waterfall outside of Clarion, PA, called Rapp Run Falls. 


Image: The falls


Image: Rapp Run River, looking like something out of Middle Earth

The other thing that amused us today were the Pennsylvania mile markers. Apparently, they mark every tenth of a mile and they have never heard of reducing factions, so there were 1/10, 2/10 (instead of 1/5), 3/10, 4/10 (instead of 2/5ths) and the one that drove me insane, 5/10th... I mean, okay, for consistency I get maybe doing everything else as tenths, but why not mark the half mile as HALF MILE?? 

Can you tell we were pretty bored of driving?



It was a long day, but we are safely back in Youngstown, OH again. Having liked out hotel so much the first time around, we simply booked it again for the return trip.

 
My family walking towards one of the Wesleyan Libraries (Mason's favorite,) Olin.

Today was not a day for the road. We did travel the very short distance from where we ended up staying last night (Metamoras, PA) to Middletown, CT, but it only took us a couple of hours. We arrived in plenty of time for Shawn to do some of her packing miracles to save Mason a bit of space in the storage unit that he and a couple of his friends rented together for the summer. But, otherwise, our job was to offer assistance and/or stay out of the way. We mostly did the latter, as it happened, as he and his colleagues had everything under control. Our big job was to make sure that all of the books Mason wanted to bring home would, in fact, fit in the car. (THAT was a challenge.)

The weather looks great in the photo, but it was warmish here and weirdly humid (ocean air???) 

The library pictured above, Olin, is where Mason has one of his two work study jobs, as circulation staff at their government records collection. He showed us the stacks and his private fiefdom of books deep in the bowels of the library (very cool, honestly.) His mother, the State Archivist of Minnesota, was well impressed. Me, I just love any place that smells of old books and red rot.

Tomorrow, we are going to have more fun adventures to post about as we will be doing the same again, only in reverse. Shawn picked up a few books about fun roadside sites at the Wesleyan Bookstore, so I'm going to be doing some extra reading tonight. We already have several stops planned and we are not intending to even try to leave this state tomorrow. This is, after all, a big chance for us to explore this state that Mason is making his home for the next three years. 

Hope you all are safe and dry! See you after more hours on the road tomorrow!

 
Image: Marblehead Lighthouse on the shores of Lake Eerie

Given how often I post pictures of virtual tours, I should probably be very clear. I WAS ACTUALLY HERE. Shawn and I decided to take a little side trip while in Ohio, and so we stopped at Marblehead Lighthouse. This is the oldest lighthouse in continuous operation on the US side of the Great Lakes. It is in a town named after it in Ohio, and it is on the shores of Lake Erie.


Lake Erie

My family has a motto for our road trips, which is: "Might be worth a detour!" and so we are always up for stopping at slightly out of the way places to see what might be seen. I have to say, the lighthouse was lovely. Normally, you are able to go inside the lighthouse, but by chance, their open season doesn't begin until after Memorial Day, so it was closed. Even so, the rocks around the peninsula were lovely and seemed to include a number of fossils. They reminded me of the lava flows around Lake Superior. 

Tomorrow, we head into Pennsylvania and I've been tasked with the job of finding out if there is anything along I-80 that might be worth a detour. I think I have found a couple of possibilities. If we stop anywhere nifty, I will post whatever we see tomorrow night. 

My brain is fried from all the hours n the road, so I will keep it short tonight. 

 I don't know if I hate the whole state of Indiana, but ValParasio has never, in all the years we have visited Shawn step mother here, grown on me.  

But, you know, after today, we probably won't be back. 

Ah, so our trip so far!  

Shawn did an amazing job packing up our car on Saturday morning. We then travelled only two and a half hours to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, to visit with my folks.  We had a lovely meal and chatted a bit and then headed to Madison, Wisconsin. We stayed at a hotel in Monona? It seemed to be a little suburbish neighborhood. There were sandhill cranes, just wandering around. I tried to get a nice shot of them, but they were easily spooked and my phone's telephoto is kind of crap. When Mason and I went off to find takeaway, we saw a woodchuck? It was a big boi rodent, at any rate, on someone's lawn. 

The next day, we drove through Chicago to ValParaiso, Indiana. Again, not a super long jag of this trip, but we figured that we might as well see Mason's grandparents as we take him off to university. We had a nice diner at Shawn's stepsister's place and got to see Grandma Margaret at her new nursing home digs as well as at Karen's. 

We are heading from here (IN) to Buffalo, New York. Wish us luck. It's going to be a long day--Google thinks seven hours, so we are expecting nine or ten. Once we're in Buffalo, we will zip down to Middletown, Connecticut for Mason's move-in day. Shawn and I are planning to check out the area a bit and then start the long trek back!

Hopefully, I will get better pictures than a blurry pair of sandhill cranes at some point!

Yesterday was a crazy busy, wonderful day.

We had breakfasts at the "second most avant garde restaurant in LA," according torachelmanija A place called Destroyer. Again, pictures are going to have to tell a better story when we are home on Thursday morning, but the food was very funky/cool, and yet surprisingly tasty. Worth the price tag? ....yes, but only as a once and awhile splurge.

From the restaurant, it was a very short walk to Maureen and Bob's. I was happy that Rachel nd Maureen got connected,  since they are both awesome writers, living in the same neighborhood of LA. 

All five of us went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology together.

How do I even describe this place?

I'll tell you what I THOUGHT it was going to be. I honestly expected that some rich creationist hired a bunch of museum types to create diorama "proving" that humans existed with dinosaurs. This was SO not that.

First of all, it seems like it's going to be a storefront, as it is wedged between a hot yoga place (not kidding) and a Thai restaurant. Instead, you walk into this seemingly quite classy reception area. It is very dark inside and it is a maze. We'd gotten hot on our walk over, so Rachel and Maureen, who had been there before, suggested we get some water in the tea room. As Mason and I are following them around twists and turns and up a grand staircase that seemed to appear out of nowhere, Mason says, "I have nightmares like this." For real. Me, too.

Meanwhile, I'm captivated by the architecture. Art deco lampshades--you know, those scalloped, tulip-shaped sconces--are everywhere, there is parquet flooring, the ceilings are arched and vaulted. It's gorgeous.

Then we start looking at the displays. One room is all about the need to preserve the art of... cat's cradles? And, you're reading these things, thinking, 'can this possibly be for real?'  The more you explore, the less anything makes sense. There is an exhibit on artifacts found in... trailer parks??? But, all of it is done very seriously, very intentionally, with bits of research that initially sound 100% plausible. You've heard of "off gassing," you know it's a real phenomenon, and then there will be some part that has you head scratching and muttering, "but... That part can't be accurate, can it??" Bats can't use echolocation to move between molecules, I AM SURE OF THAT.... right?? Right???

Afterward, over gelato at a place down the street, Rachel laid out her going theory. The guy who was responsible for the museum was an artist, his wife had some connection to museums that I'm forgetting,  but Rachel figures the whole museum is actually an art installation. It's a commentary or satire of the museum "experience."

This is the only thing that makes sense to me.

From there, we said goodbye to Maureen and Bob, and Rachel graciously drove Mason and I to the Long Beach Aquarium. This was a much more straight forward experience, but just as amazing. Mason had serious ocean squee. Rachel and I were right there with him. 

Once again, we were the weirdos who literally sat in front of all the "wrong" tanks. A perfect example was in the area where everyone else was touching manta rays, we were on the floor by the bird exhibit watching flounders. We weren't even excited by the birds, but the random fish in the water--we were watching the flounders... Because they are legitimately cool and weird. Did you know, flounders start their life cycle like normal fish, with their eyes on either side of their head, but as the age their eyes migrate to one side and then they spend the rest of their lives swimming sideways? We must have spent easily 20 minutes watching them. Then there were jelly fish with bioluminescence, and crabs eating calms, penguins behaving strangely, and sea otters and sea lions and, and...




We were there for three and a half hours and, if we'd had our druthers, we'd STILL be there.



What a great experience. I caught a few pictures of Mason staring joyfully into the tanks. So, once again: worth it.



Today is UCLA! 

 Normally, I try to keep up the journal while ON the road, but we had some very long driving days and spotty wifi. I will do my best to recount the days for you now.

Day ONE: A Slow Meander from Minnesota through Upper Wisconsin (with surprise parks!)



Shawn, our navigator, took us through a number of tiny Minnesota towns that seemed connected by "sister cities" in Sweden. I found this water tower rather charming and hopped out to take a picture. (Picture: a water tower in the shape of a old-fashioned coffee kettle that says 'Vitommen till Lindström" with rosemaling around the words.) If you're curious about this town, here's the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindstrom,_Minnesota.

From there we ended up stopping in the boringingly named Interstate State Park, but which is AMAZING. The section we explored was a glacial lava flow that had a ton of natural potholes and such. Our state park pass, which we got on last year's trip to Itasca State Park, is still good for one more month, so we hopped out to explore. 

Here's a shot from the interior of a feature they called "Little Oven" or some such.



Basically it was one of these potholes that had an area at the bottom of a ravine that had been broken out at some point, naturally, and the park built stairs and a platform under the stagnant water pool of the rest of the pot hole. It was a hot day, but the interior, just even a step inside, was cool and clammy. The whole place was full of these, but you could not get as good a sense of how deep they were, because they were filled with water. I'd say that this "chimney" section was twenty feet? It was impressively deep, at any rate.

The Interstate State Park is on both sides of the St. Croix river (which forms part of the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.) There were several spots that you could look down over the river at the pine forests.



It's difficult to see in this picture, but the St. Croix is a swiftly moving river, so the foam you can see is actually churning water. (Picture: muddy brown river, looking across to lava rock cliffs covered in pine trees.) 

We spent about an hour exploring this park and vowed to come back. It was extremely lovely and there was much more that we didn't do (apparently, there is a cliff hike!) because we hadn't even left Minnesota yet and we needed to arrive in Manitowac, Wisconsin that night to check into the hotel. We passed people doing rock climbing (with full gear) because some of these cliff faces were both sheer, but clearly had good hand holds. I imagine if you were the rock climbing sort, this would be a great park for you, as well.

We missed JFK's urinal in Spooner, Wisconsin--supposedly the young senator stopped to pee at the Big Dick's Buckhorn Inn--but we didn't miss the two-tailed walleye in Shell Lake, Wisconsin. 


(Picture: a fish with two tails.) The weather was starting to get really steamy at this point, which was the only problem that dogged us on this road trip. Our a/c in the car is... semi-functional? It tries. But, it can't really keep up with high humidity and anything over 89 F / 31.7 C. Mason joked about all of us swimming in our own sweat, but it wasn't much of a joke. We had to crack the windows because it was kind of crazy-hot.

Along the roads, we saw several deer, including a mama and her fawn. 

Besides, the general scenery, the star of our first day of road tripping was Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips, Wisconsin. This place defies description in many ways. It's a sort of, "you have to see it to believe it" roadside attraction.



(Picture: the spookiest concrete and broken beer bottle owl you have ever seen in your life.) This place was the brain child of Fred Smith, a guy with a lot of energy, a lot of concrete, and a lot of broken beer bottles. To be fair to Mr. Smith, he started working on these... er, folk art... pieces before the internet and, having driven through it, I can tell you, there's not much else happening in Phillips, Wisconsin. 



There are over 400 statues in this park. Including a life-sized Budweiser beer wagon with horses. (Picture: two bucks locking horns while creepy-a$$ statue people look on.) Mason pointed out that the most alarming part of this park--and there were a lot of alarming parts--was that Mr. Smith did not paint all of his human figures looking straight on, so every once and a while you'd look up to realize that one of these terrifying bad boys was giving you the side-eye.

It was FANTASTIC. 10/10 would again. 

Highly recommend, if you find yourself in Central Wisconsin with nothing better to do. Heck, I'd even say make a day trip of it. It's weird and wonderful and the gift shop is also a local craft shop, so what the heck, it's a twofer.

Then we drove and drove and drove--this is not that long of a trip, but we purposely chose all the backroads and whatnot to see all the small towns, etc., until we got to Manitowac, Wisconsin, where we spent the night. Basically, I posted a few pictures to Facebook and collapsed in a heap, because the next day, we'd be boarding the SS Badger to be ferried across Lake Michigan.


Day Two: The Sailing Badger

We booked passage on the historic SS Badger, a car ferry, that would sail us across a great lake from Manitowac, Wisconsin to Luddington, Michigan, but it didn't set sail until 1 pm CST. So, we got up early in the morning, crossed the street for a breakfast and coffee at Paneara and then went off, like the nerds we are, to find the spot where Sputnik IV crashed into the streets of Manitowac. It was an overcast day, but that did not dampen Shawn's enthusiasm posing at the plaque that marks the spot (sort of.)


(Picture: smiling Shawn sitting next to what looks like a grave marker. Not easily read are the words: "Sputnik IV: Satellite fragment recovered here September 6, 1962.") The plaque was put in so idiots like us wouldn't get killed standing in traffic taking a picture of the ring that marks the actual landing spot in the middle of the street.

Look, we're idiots, okay? Plus, the streets were very dead at 9 am on a Saturday morning. So, we got this nice shot of our feet touching the VERY spot.



(Picture: three sets of toes touching a ring in the middle of cracked asphalt. The stubby tennis shoes belong to me. Shawn is in the fancy brown sandals. Mason in flip flops.)

We then spent some time in the Manitowac Maritime Museum. Mason and I went on the tour of the submarine. Shawn, the claustrophobic, 6'1" woman, declined. As Shawn was later fond to recounting, it was maybe not the BEST use of our time to go to a museum mostly devoted to SHIPWRECKS ON LAKE MICHIGAN before boarding a ship crossing Lake Michigan.

The WWII submarine, on the other hand, gave us a strong counterpoint to the coal-powered steam ship, which has since had massive pollution mitigation done to it, but which used to dump tons of coal ash into the lake. Because, did you know, that when the submarines went under water they could not use their diesel fuel, of course, so RAN ON BATTERY????? I had no idea. I spent a lot of time thinking about "American exceptionalism" and wondered what the hell happened to the people who said, "mmm, let's battery power this two zillion ton warship!" since they now baulk at the idea of battery-powered cars.

But, thanks to a medical emergency--someone's knees locked up moving between the bulkheads, though not in our party--we were delayed and so we ended up having to rush back to check out of our hotel and to the SS Badger. 

(Picture: impressive-looking boat silhouetted in the sunset, because I actually took this picture when we landed in Michigan.)

When we were leaving the Wisconsin side, there was a bit of drizzle, but no waves. Even so, we were glad that Shawn thought to book us a "state room" on the ship. Getting the car on and off was kind of trippy, though, really, all we did was let a drug sniffing dog snoot up our car for contraband, and then hand our keys over to a valet. We took our carry-ons and boarded the ship.

Our "state room" was not a lot more than a closet with a couple of beds in it, but there was a private bathroom and the two most important things above the sink:


(Picture: a bright blue barf bucket and a Bible.)

There were a lot of places to buy Dramimine (sp? the motion sickness pills) and signs reminding you sternly that "If you feel AT ALL sea sick, DO NOT buy food.) There were two restaurants on board, an observation deck (with deckchairs to rearrange), and an indoor dining hall where Bingo was played. 

I will say that given all the hype about this being a historic steamship, I was expecting it to be a bit more upscale than it was. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the interior, but I can tell you there were no chandeliers. There were rows of seats that reminded me of a Greyhound Bus or maybe even an Amtrak Train. So, kind of... let's say, heavy-use, rather than high end. The other reason I was grateful for a private room? A door I could shut, a bed I could call my own, and a tiny barrier between me and the zillion and a half families and their screaming kids on the other side.

That being said, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. It does not save time, going around Chicago. In fact, the ship travels all of 15 miles per hour and takes a good 4 hours on a clear sailing day. But, I didn't have to drive and I got to say that I've now traversed a great lake by ship, which is kind of cool, honestly. The other kind of cool fact? The route of the SS Badger is considered part of Hwy 10.The highway ends at the boat dock and picks up again on the other side. Despite part of the journey being over water, the highway is continuous. 

Plus, we got spectacular views:



(Picture: okay, so really it looks like a blank canvass where someone drew a straight line and one half is grey-blue and the other half is a kind of muddy blue, but it was LAKE freaking Michigan, one of the five GREAT LAKES and I crossed it on a BOAT!!)

This is getting long, so I'll save the rest for part II. But, the way you picked up your car on the other end was kind of chaotic. Everyone filed off the boat and the valet-persons drove out cars. When you recognized yours, you claimed it. Seems like a great way to steal a car, honestly, since the keys are left in it and the drivers' side door is left open. But, Mason spotted ours and off we started for Lansing, Michigan at 7 pm (since we'd moved into EST, and lost an hour.)