We got up this morning, loaded up the car and headed for the
border, across the Bluewater Bridge. I was a bit concerned that we would have a
long border wait at one of the busiest crossings, but I needn’t have worried –
there were lots of lanes open and we only waited a few minutes. It was also
entertaining to see the border guard try to remain detached as we answered his
questions and you could tell he really wanted to hear some stories about our
adventures –
“And where are you going now?”
“Well, we’re cutting under the
Great Lakes before heading back up to Winnipeg, but we’re going to go through
the upper peninsula.”
“… (secretly wishing he could ask us to take him with us)…
Well, drive safe.”
Another beautiful drive – it sort of “misted really hard”
for awhile – you needed to use the windshield wipers, but the “drops” were
really tiny, and sounded more like bugs hitting the windshield than raindrops…
even a new kind of rain for Vancouver-y me!
We also did make our big Walmart stop – strangely, the
hardest thing to find (which is shocking to me, at back-to-school season) was a
decent backpack. And I know I got the old one at a Walmart. So we wound up
getting a new suitcase instead- it should be useable as a carryon (at least on
big planes) and it has those funky 360°
wheels – I’ve wanted one for awhile. So now we’ve pretty much replaced
everything we actually need – and a
few things we don’t. In an interesting turn of events, I’m noticing a (both intentional
and unintentional) preference for black and hot pink as theme colours for my
purchases this summer. No particular judgement, just an observation.
I will admit, I didn’t believe Adam when he told me that the
people up here call themselves Yoopers. It sounds way too Dr. Seuss to be real.
But it’s true! It comes from the letter “U” (upper) and the letter “P”
(peninsula). So Yoopers it is. I’ve seen it on more than one sign.
The other things we consistently saw on signs throughout
this part of the world were ads for “the best pasties on the upper peninsula”
(in a somewhat unlikely turn of events, every restaurant, café and store we’ve
come across has “the best pasties on the upper peninsula” – Adam has considered
consulting the math and statistics departments of local universities to help
explain this phenomenon). Of course, the first thing we imagined was an
extremely healthy cabin country burlesque community. But in fact, what they
were referring to are pronounced “past-eez” and are basically meat pies (the
one we tried was like beef stew) without the pie shape. Sort of an early
precursor to “Hot Pockets.” We each had one for dinner at a cute restaurant in
the next town that had an absolutely breathtaking view of Lake Michigan. There
were hummingbirds hovering around feeders on the patio, and the tables were all
stocked with some simple board games, a set of binoculars and at least one guide
to local birds.
I don’t think that “pasties” will become my new favourite
food (I still prefer my pies to have sweet things in them) but it was very good
and I’m glad I tried something new.
Our motel this evening is called the Chapel Hill Hotel (not
surprisingly, since across the street/highway, on a slight rise, is a quaint
Lutheran church) and while it is charming as heck and has the plushest hotel
towels I’ve felt in a long while, it does not have anything so crazily
new-fangled as an internet connection. So I’m typing this into Word and will
post it tomorrow, from another strangely named town, two states over.
Fortunately, one of the (about 5) TV stations we get up here
is showing “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” tonight. Woohoo!
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