Small Town

On Thursday, I dropped Mom off at the airport and then went to check out Sundog Boarding Kennels. On the way home from that, I stopped at this little organic food place in Traverse City, where I'd tried to eat on a previous visit, but it had been closed. I got a lovely hummus wrap and took it home to enjoy it. As I was eating, I got a text message from Mark, who was still at work. It said, "How was lunch at the organic eatery?"

???

I could only recall one other person coming in while I was there, whom I didn't know. But I guess they knew me! I texted back to Mark, how on Earth did you know I was in the organic eatery?

Small town, he replied.

I guess I'm already becoming a part of my new town!

Leelanau

So here I am, newly arrived in Traverse City, and we are already taking off on a trip. Mark has a conference for the American Heart Association in New Orleans, and I am fortunate enough to be able to accompany him. Except this means that Maggie, who JUST ARRIVED in her new home, has to be left. And Grandma is right now winging her way to her home in Bend, Oregon, which is now WAY too far away for a Maggie drop-off.

This is a major problem.

Fortunately, today I found a wonderful place called Sundog. Tracy, the woman who runs it, is a former zoo caretaker who took care of cougars and wolves and such before the zoo here shut down (and went to great pains to find good homes for all of them). Now she looks after dogs at her lovely place in the countryside of Leelanau County. They get to hang out together both inside and outside in an enormous yard, or have their private space if they need it. We made a visit there today and will be back tomorrow to drop Maggie off. (Gulp. I really wish this weren't coming up quite so soon! Especially in view of Maggie's escapade 6 years ago, when she was gone for a WEEK. I told Tracy about this, and she assured me all will be well. I really had a good feeling about the place, so here we go.)

So Maggie and I went for a walk along the Leelanau Trail after our visit with Tracy. This trail goes from Traverse City to Sutton's Bay, and is the exact trail where Mark was riding his bike two weeks ago and broke his collarbone. It is a lovely place, as you can see from the photos, as long as you do not wreck on your bike and break your collarbone.

On the way home, I stopped to take a picture of West Bay in downtown Traverse City, and then a vineyard that is just up the hill from Mark's house. The last picture is Maggie going into her new abode.

Sorry for so many posts in one day. I don't think my life will be quite so eventful from now on and I hope to keep up a bit better, so we'll just have one at a time from now on!

Sleeping Bear Dunes

So this brings us to yesterday. One of my nicest memories of visiting Traverse City is going to "the coast;" i.e. the coast of Lake Michigan. Which does look like the ocean in that there are waves and no opposite shore in sight...but does not resemble the ocean in that it is fresh water. And when I visited a year ago August, it really resembled more the Caribbean Sea. Sparkling turquoise water giving way to deep blue further on...white sand, everyone in bathing suits, swimming, enjoying the day.

So here we are yesterday, having a lovely sunny day and I'm thinking okay, time to go to the coast! Should we bring the bathing suits...

Imagine my surprise when we got to the coast and it was SO WINDY you could barely stand up! Poor Maggie was leaning into the wind, getting sand in her face, barely hanging in there...no one else was there, not a sunbather in sight.

Okay, so it was November 5.

Anyway, we enjoyed seeing Lake Michigan, snapped a few pics (see grass bending over sideways), and went north to Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Sleeping Bear Dunes are enormous sand dunes formed by glaciers a long time ago. There's this one in particular that goes 450 feet straight down to Lake Michigan. You can't even see Lake Michigan; it just looks like it goes off into nothing. A sign explains that it's EXTREMELY EXHAUSTING to climb back up if you happen to find yourself sliding down there. Mom and I decided to walk to the overlook a little ways beyond in lieu of an exciting descent to Lake Michigan.

A little ways along, there was a dune approved for climbing. Of course I had to test my mettle and climb to the top (I am that small speck of black in the picture). It really wasn't extremely exhausting, but then that dune wasn't as steep or long. So maybe someday...

We were surprised to see at one of our stops that Maggie had gotten completely wrapped up in the blanket in the back seat. I like to call this photo, "Obi-wan-canine-obi."

The 45th Parallel

After we got to TC, we slept in (interrupted briefly to take a picture of a lovely sunrise), gave Maggie a special "welcome-to-TC" Cherry Capital Cookie for dogs (thanks, Mark), and headed up the peninsula. At the end is a lighthouse and an old log cabin, and a special sign explaining that we are on the 45th parallel. Also on the 45th parallel is Salem, Oregon! So I didn't feel so far away from home. :-)

We had a nice dinner at a place called "The Cook's House," where I finally had that cabernet awaiting me in TC.

Catching Up

Hello from TC, where it's been unseasonably warm! Beautiful, sunny weather has followed me all the way across the country these past 10 days...but I think my luck is about to change, as I see tomorrow's high is 52 (as opposed to 70 today), and snow is forecast for the weekend. Oh, well; it was great while it lasted.

Backing up a little bit to my last travel day, I want to comment that while I was completely happy and satisfied with Motel 6, Mom and I were forced to upgrade for our last night to La Quinta, the only pet-friendly place in Peru, Illinois. Wow! Though we really didn't need the iron and ironing board, and didn't use the fitness room or indoor pool, everything was just so NICE! It was definitely a treat to spoil ourselves. (Thanks for the link to pet-friendly places, Allison.)

Heading out from Peru, we stopped at Starved Rock, a beautiful and interesting rocky outcropping/state park near Ottawa, Illinois. Mom used to go there a lot with her crazy friends when they all lived in Ottawa, and they would climb straight up the side. Legend has it that a bunch of Illini Indians retreated to the top of the rock while being chased by the Ottawa Indians, and they preferred to starve up there rather than the surrender. Eventually, the Ottawa came up and finished off what was left of them, and then some European explorers happened by, saw the carnage, and the story became known. Another story about this rock involves a beautiful young Indian maiden throwing herself off it when her true love took up with someone else.

No one knows what really happened, but it makes for some interesting tales. And, by the way, the Illini Indians were being chased by the Ottawa because one of them had killed Chief Pontiac, the leader of the Ottawas. So I guess they really shouldn't have done that in the first place.

After Starved Rock, Mom and I took a trip down Mom's Memory Lane in Ottawa, Illinois. We wanted to locate the schools where she had taught, and my secret agenda was to see the church where my mom and dad got married. (I didn't know if Mom would want to see it given the state of the union that followed.)

We wandered around town in the car and almost immediately found Lincoln School, where Mom had taught third grade. It was quite a bit bigger than she remembered it. More wandering, and we found ourselves at a park in the middle of town. Mom recognized this as the park in which Lincoln and Douglas had their famous first debate. We walked around and enjoyed the beautiful fall colors and foliage, and Mom was surprised to see a huge fountain in the middle of the park with two statues in gold of Lincoln and Douglas. She was SURE that they were originally on the side of the park, and not in a fountain.

Eventually we found the site of the original monument. A large boulder marks the exact spot where the debate really took place, next to two now-empty bases for statues. So Mom was vindicated, and quite satisfied that her memory is still intact.

As we left the park, we looked up and across the street, and what did we see but Christ Episcopal Church. Yes, right across from the park was the church where my mom and dad got married. I took a picture and after one comment about yep, right here is where it happened, we moved on. Relatively painless, after all.

You know, the wedding of your parents takes on mythic proportions when you're a kid. You see the wedding photos in their special albums with the pearly white covers...your mom is all dressed up, your dad is dapper, both of them are impossibly young. You've looked at them so many times, so it's kind of amazing to see the site where all of this actually occurred.

Anyway, we'd found one of Mom's schools, but not the other two. After some fruitless wandering up and down the streets of Ottawa, we looked for someone to ask, preferably someone old. We hit gold with a guy in a quick mart who remembered both of Mom's other schools and told us neither one of them existed anymore. One of them is a park, and one is a low-income housing high-rise. We managed to find the site of the old Washington School (now park) with the help of another senior citizen resident, snapped a pic, and left town contented.

We stayed that night with Judy, a friend of Mom's from a trip she took to China a few years ago. Thanks to both Judy and her dog, Chelsea, for making all of us welcome!

P.S. Picture number two is of me touching a mammoth tooth at the Starved Rock Visitor Center, over 10,000 years old (the tooth, not the visitor center). Oooooh!

WE MADE IT!

Two tired people and one well-traveled dog made it all the way to the pinky of the mitten tonight!

More later...

You CAN Go Home Again

Today I went to Hickory Hill Park in Iowa City with my friend Mary, my mom, and Maggie. I hadn't been back in 9 years, since I see no point in walking in a park without a dog and I haven't had my dogs with me on previous visits. It was so wonderful to be there, to walk along the hills and dales and creeks and wooded paths that I spent countless hours traversing when I lived in Iowa City. When I first moved to town, I would go into the park and purposely get lost, wandering around until I eventually saw something familiar and could find my way out. This adventuring lasted about six months, after which I pretty much knew every part of the park....but it remained my wonderful oasis; my place to think and walk and relish being outdoors with my dogs. Here I composed stupid songs about how much Emily liked to chase rabbits and squirrels and then lie down in the creek, exhausted, lapping up water once she caught her breath. Here I skied in the winter and lay down in the snow, everything quiet, marveling that I was warm in the midst of all that frozen splendor. Always we stopped at some point during the walk, to change from moving through the environment to being a part of the environment. It was my mini-Thoreau experiment.

And always at the end, we'd get back to the parking lot, and I would open the door to the car and Emily would just stand there. And she would look at me, and back to the car, and then out at the park. And I would sigh and sit down on the curb by the open car door and say yes, I know it is very sad that we have to leave the park. And she'd come over and we'd sit there, side by side, lamenting that we couldn't just live at Hickory Hill, but gradually accepting the reality that we would indeed have to get in the car and go to our house. And after a few minutes, having made the transition from our wild, unfettered park selves to our civilized, house selves, I'd get up and Emily would hop in the car and we'd go home.

I heart you, Hickory Hill.