Summertime no blues 3: Day Trip

The one day trip is a hit or miss.  As "well duh" as it sounds, it can go wrong or it can go right.  I might have to change that opening sentence before I publish this.

Just to warn you, this post contains no words of wisdom or morals.  It is strictly just a boring "trip story, this is where we went this is what happened" post.  Nothing more than a nice trip to a town I recommend.    

Last year we made a one day trip which was wrong wrong and bad.  All the way through it was just my daughters fighting with each other and me eating alone and neither of them much interested in anything we were doing except to yell at the other that they were wrong.  There wasnt anything nice about the one day trip last year. Not to mention that I made a wrong turn and had to go back a way I didnt know.  

Someone must have felt sorry for me last year because this year s one day trip was quite the opposite.  

In the past on my blogs I wasnt much for telling where I was or where we went.  I thought it could alienate some of my readers.  But slowly I dont get hung up on this as much.  So this time I will totally uncover all cities and even put in a map. 

We stay in the north of Michigan, but not in the upper peninsula.  Last year we drove to a rich little tourist town and a place where well off people can come up from other towns on Lake Michigan and park their boats, in the town of Charlevoix.  Its a nice town, but very small and mainly for richer people it seems who want to get up north with their boats.  Charlevoix has an excellent huge library I must say. It has an interesting history too and all that history is in the library.  Excellent library. 

This year I took it one step further and we went to the next town up the coast to

Petosky.  

Now Petosky is known for at least one thing and maybe people know it for two things.  The best thing about Petosky is it is named after the special stone which  can be found a lot around there. A petosky stone is a stone with fossils of some corral, the rugose corral.  It looks a bit like a corral print. Hexagon.   Here is the wikipedia link for more on the stone.  The stone is often polished and made into a special wearing stone like a diamond around your neck.  Yes, it is that beautiful.  

We walked out to the lighthouse (shown here) and had fun trying not to get sprayed by the big waves washing over the walkway to the lighthouse.  My older daughter took all the pictures and got the wettest.  

Whereas last year we had a fiasco of a luncheon where I was the only one eating while my daugthers watched (one wasnt hungry, and the other wanted to buy a submarine from a fast food restaurant down the street). This time we nearly had a great lunch in which two out of three of us had yummy meals. Unfortunately it was too spicy for my youngest daughter.  But the mixed berry drink was fantastic.  I will link the restaurant if it helps them at all get anyone in there from reading this. I was not paid anything whatsoever by them, they dont know who I am, but it was a great restaurant.  Get the berry drink.

On these trips I dont want to spare any money for anything (just about) and anything my daughters ask for I am prone to get.  So they each got a huge ice cream cone for dessert and they were both very happy about this.  Those cones are a meal in themselves.  

I wanted to walk a bit more on the streets up and down, but I was curtailed.  But that was ok.  However I was sad about missing the tour of what maybe a few people might know Petosky is also famous for.  The fact that Ernest Hemingway used to summer very near here on Walloon lake from the beginning of his life in 1900 to 1920.  There is a Hemingway walk each Fall in Petosky too in which the gatherers can retrace the steps of Hemingway including many stops in Petosky.   I wish my daughters had let me take the time to do this tour.  Sadly.... no.  

What capped the day off was going back down to the beach. The sun was out now and warmer and the wind and surf was not so strong.  So we walked along the beach looking for Petosky stones.  I was going to make a bad joke that I suspected the rocks for the beach were imported from California, but just then my daughter found a big petosky stone.  Then another.  I looked some also.  I walked farther and lay down on some grass.  My younger daughter did the same while my older daughter searched for petosky stones.  She found several in fact.  A couple small ones which is normal, but one sizable.  

We stayed on the beach for about an hour then drove back.  It was six pm,we had been there around 4 hours.  Not so long, but very nice.  A day trip out.  Very nice day.  That was what it was all about.  I was so thrilled with the day i veered off at a rest stop along Lake Michigan, parked and took another look at the lake.  Beautiful.  Beautiful.   

Take the time sometimes to recognize the small beautiful niceties in life.  Often they go unnoticed, because they are small, but when you do recognize them, you understand that they really do count.  

Back in 1984 when "Meat is Murder" came out, I bought it upon its release.  Then I kind of lost interest in the band. I didnt get anymore releases when they came out.   But lately I have been rediscovering the Smiths.  I have the best of cd, but I think I will start buying the records. I also listened to Strangeways here we come.  Their last albume before they split up. 

Summertime not blues 2022 : Small details

 People dont realize maybe that really what makes up most of life are the small details.  I have mentioned it before.  In the day you might have 15 minutes of high adrenaline activity, but the bulk of the day is made up of minimal things.  Really nothing wrong with that.  I think it is true of 99.9 per cent of the people in the world.  Maybe. 

Likewise, when trying to feel good about life and feel good about yourself, dont overlook the small victories you make daily.  For some people this might even entail getting out of bed.  (An aside, depression and anxiety are two of the biggest "diseases" in the US.  And with the covid virus anxiety and depression have gone up even more.. I forget if I saw the statistic 9 per cent or 39 per cent).  

It is not a matter of winning the lottery or buying a house or car,  it is a matter of doing something correct for the first time. Something you were afraid to do or had doubts that you could do it.  Dont laugh.  For some people, once they have done these things many times, they are old hat.  But there is always the first time which may be scary or nerve racking.  Just like the first day of school was.  

This wasnt the first time we had to go to the new laundry place.  The other one closed down, the one we were used to and had experience with.  It closed over Covid.  So we have to go to a new one to get our clothes done.  We went here last year, but I still didnt have the details worked out.  All the small details can also drag you down.  Do you use quarters or credit card?  Soap? Quarters for soap.  Rats, I didnt bring enough quarters. The same happened last year.  But anyway this year I didnt want to spend my quarters anymore.  This time I was going to use a credit card.  In the laundry store??  I would never have done that in other years.  

So the machine wasnt working.  Rats what went wrong.  My daughter said it didnt accept my credit card. I should do the whole thing over again.  I tried again.  Still didnt work. No business attendant working today.  No one to ask what went wrong.  So, I gathered up my strength and asked a fellow lady patron who looked like she had experience with these machines.  Normally I shy away from asking people for help. My mother always did. My father didnt like to. I guess I take after my Father.  That was why it was difficult to ask this other lady for help.  But I did.  She grabbed the handle, opened it, and closed it real forcefully with a bang.  Bam.  Water goes in, it started.   Oh   celebration.  thank you thank you. My daughter kept me from being too overly excited, but boy was I thankful.  

Then the drying.  That wasnt too complicated. But you can never tell if the door is closed properly.  I thought it took two drying cycles, but it was three. Remember that next year.  Also remember to use the smaller washing machines.  They are cheaper and we dont need the big ones. We dont have that much stuff.  You are laughing. Thats ok.  It all worked out and I was happy.  A victory for Daddy by himself. 

Tom Cruise might not be afraid to climb 100 story skyscrapers in Mission Impossible, but has he ever done his laundry himself in a laundry shop?  Probably not.  Someone would do that for him.  He wouldnt know what to do either.  "What type of soap should I get?  Will the washer also dry?" etc.  "Why isnt this frigging machine working?  Gosh darnit (kicking it), work, you stupid... work (banging it). "   

When we were there, I saw a guy doing laundry with a

shirt that said "crew" on it.  I had a pretty good idea that he was the tour manager or helper for a travelling group and one duty was keeping the groups clothes clean.  Maybe it was Tom Cruise who was travelling and the guy was doing it for a local movie shooting crew.  He knew what to do.  Tom Cruise wouldnt know what to do.  Maybe.  Then again maybe this guy was just wearing this name brand t shirt and I mistook him for "crew".  Maybe also.  

The first time I took a bus as a kid from the suburbs, to the city I thought I was pretty good. I had figured it out.  Other people on the bus were bored. They took the bus every day.  But I didnt know what to do, how much to pay, maybe where to get off, where to sit. I was awkward and nervous.  And who was on the bus?  Now, I take public transportation every day and I know everything.  But back then as a teen ager... it was a scary accomplishment.  

These are the little things that we can cheer ourselves on with. Yeah we did it. We figured it out. Or, maybe not this time, but next time will be better and I will be smarter.  This accomplishment, I think both my daughters and myself felt this accomplishment.  Well, maybe my younger daughter not as much.  She kind of takes things in stride.  But it was a small victory of sorts for all of us. Collectively we figured it out.  

That was worth a summertime cheers.  As Daddy I think I may have been even happier than my kids, because there is this stereotype that parents are expected to know everything and show their kids how to do it.  And well, the truth of the matter is, we dont know everything and we get it wrong. But we cant let on to our kids that some of these small things... we dont know how to do them just like they dont.  But shhhh, (whisper) we cant let the kids know we dont know what we are doing.  

The vacation, was so wonderful.  More stories along these lines coming up.  

I listened to this while writing.  They are on tour in the Fall. I hope to see them.  I had this record, but sold it.  I have a couple other titles still.  This one from 2019