I Do Give a Damn

I love Michigan. Superfans, show me mercy or may the ghost of Woody himself key my car. I can't help the way I feel. The vast majority of it is beautiful. This is Lake Michigan. The nice view was courtesy of Big Sable lighthouse, just north of Ludington (the knuckle of your pinky). I came across this picture the other day and wanted to be there again.

We used to vacation there when I was a kid. Many summers were spent along the south shore of Hamlin Lake at Twin Points Resort. This past summer, Erica and I decided to take a long weekend and drive to Manistee, about 30 miles north of Ludington. The idea was that we were going to try and make our own Michigan memories. After nearly two full days of rain and overcast skies, we woke up to an amazing blue sky, took two or three pictures of downtown Manistee and headed south. We spent the next two days at Snyder's Shoreline Inn. Erica was a good sport as I recalled old times. "... and we would walk out on THAT pier after ice cream..." "... that's different... that's different... hey, what happened to..." I would like to go back to that time just once to say hi. That's a bit much, but I'm feeling nostalgic at the moment. It's not fair to pack so many good memories into one annual pilgrimage, only to have the responsibilities that come with a certain age snatch them away. I always wanted to go back. And now that I have, I want to go back again.

I'll write more about it later. This is my place that I can't talk enough about. I was afraid before heading back last summer that it was the people that made it great. And with a lot of them gone or grown, it's something that can never be recreated. So I was glad to find that it hadn't lost its appeal.