Still Ending Summer: Labor Day Weekend in Michigan

Soooo....end of summer REDUX! Just when you think it is really over... you go Northern Michigan for a long Labor Day weekend. We decided since our daughter wanted to work at camp for end of season when they never have enough staff that we should go up and hide for a weekend. Listening to the church bells chime at Trinity in Arcadia at 7 on Sunday night toking on a little cigar I bought up in Leland, reminds me that tomorrow we have to head back home for a violent 9 hour drive that will truly, and finally be “THE END OF SUMMER!”

This was a good trip. When i say we came up to hide I mean it in the truest of senses. We always know a lot of people up here during the summer but the end of summer, we knew only one couple at camp and only a few of the kids working. Very little pressure to socialize. So we did not.

We left Thursday afternoon after school and got in at 1:30 A.M. Friday morning which means we woke up here which is always good. It got down to about 50 over night and we were already avoiding rain at home. Win/Win. Friday was a slow day. breakfast with Laura up in Elberta and then getting laura settled in on staff. We then went and picked Blackberries There is something about picking your own that makes me feel... like an illegal immigrant. We got our fill and later on had dinner up at a place called The Manitou a little north of Crystal Lake. It was average. We came and went and looked around camp, saw our daughter briefly and went to the Big Apple bar and sat alone in the place with the owner watching Detroit come back and beat the brewers splitting a pitcher of Bud. Not a bad day.

Friday dawned early with a hangover. It started the same way every day up here does for me including yesterday which is to get up, feed the dogs, let the dogs out, let the dogs in, load the dogs in the car and go to the gas station to get the Traverse City paper. Unlike yesterday, today I made breakfast and then ate and read the paper. We then took a long walk around town, through the woods, out on the point and even a little beach walk. The I had to go over and help a retired Lutheran Minister trim his trees. I held the latter as he wielded a chainsaw over my head cutting branches. Fortunately he could only get a few and I dissuaded him from using the ladder to get up on the roof. No one died or broke a hip.

Continuing Friday we decided to take a canoe float. Everyone from Arcadia goes and floats the lower Platte which lazily meanders down from Platte Lake through Loon Lake to Lake Michigan but it is slow, boring and I have done it at least 10 times now. Feeling adventerous we decided to float the middle of The Betsie River which meant driving to Thompsonville. We went to a camp ground which contained primarily bikers and then got in the 15 passenger van (illegal everywhere now I thought) and were dropped off with our canoe at a road overpassing the Betsie in the middle of no where.

Once we were dumped with our canoe we started down the Betsie. It is supposed to be one of America’s premier trout streams but they had also warned us that in a week the sakmon would be running so thick up stream that they would be an obstacle. Hard to imagine. The river trends toward narrow and winds around like a snake. It also has a lot of obstacles in the form of trees and dead falls. Also, when it gets narrow it can get fast. It was a very tough float but we were all alone and din’t see a sole. It was probably too much a float for our skill level. We never tipped but we upended three times and ended with a lot of water in the canoe and a very sore butt. We left there getting done with the two and a half hour float in about two hours. It was bee-utiful.

We left there and attemoted to go to a bar our son had recomended. It was “The Laughing Pony” in Thompsonville. It had thiry motor cycles in front of it. We passed. Still soaked from the canoe float we decided to go to the Manistee County Fair! I had never been to a county fair. I had been to a State Fair and it was cool. Lots of really big pigs and really good (bad) food. What I learned was that county fairs, though amusing briefly in a sad, dirty kind of way, really suck. Some rides more suitable to a bad Catholic grade school picnic. A few BAD food booths (cold pizza, funnel cakes, coney dogs, I think that was about it.) a booth full of 4-H exhibits (and what not), two barns full of animals (the pigs were not that big) and that was about it. After my cold slice of pizza the most interesting thing was they had little kids peddling tricycles and pulling sleds with the big moving weight like a tractor pull. Their parents and other onlookers cheered the straining youths on and it was... creepy.

In our next installment....Highway 22 and the Michigan Circle! Wait for it... wait for it....