R and J in the USA

Michigan, dear Michigan. How do we love thee? Let us count the ways. Well, we don’t know if it’s safe to say that Michigan had us at hello, but by the time we said goodbye to Michigan a full two weeks after entering it, the longest stay of our trip so far, we were all in for Michigan, hook, line and sinker.

Our time in Michigan was filled with so many adventures, delicious foods, gorgeous beaches and swims, a blissful birthday celebration, and our first opportunity to stay in one place long enough to actually feel like we were on vacation.

We drove through Ann Arbor to see the famed University of Michigan stadium with the massive golden M on it that we would see throughout the towns and villages of a loyal Michigan, hanging from houses, mailboxes or adorned by passersby in wearable merch. 

We headed to Lansing for our capitol tour and were awed by the architecture and history of the building and the state.

Having so little time to tackle all the motor city had to offer, we took whatever bite we could out of the The Henry Ford complex and were humbled, inspired, and sobered at the Charles H. Wright African American Museum.

We made our way up to a city by the bay (no, not that one, Steve Perry), aptly named Bay City, where a 5K was run and, more importantly, ribs were eaten, at the Labadie Ribfest 5K. We bypassed all of southwest Michigan, sadly missing out on Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park as we made our way through Traverse City where Ryan gave Julie the early birthday present of taking her out to a movie, an activity she had long been craving on the trip but there was never time nor preference to go to a movie rather than to a local site. 

Julie got to celebrate her birthday split between two of the most beautiful bodies of water she’d ever been on. Torch Lake, which gave her an extra special birthday present that you can read more about in the more in-depth Michigan posts, and Grand Traverse Bay, which gave sunsets of such beauty that would be hard to match anywhere else.

We discovered and fell in love with a little town called Elk Rapids, where we spent days on their pristine Caribbean-like beaches as we kicked off a weeklong Blog and Itinerary Bootcamp that we’d decided to do as we entered Michigan, making a massive change to our itinerary in the hopes that, if we stopped moving, exploring, and touring for long enough, we could catch up on both the blog detailing our past and the itinerary laying out our future. 

We spent a week bouncing between Elk Rapids and Torch Lake and then making our way up to the tourist town of Petoskey, where we’d split our time between a beautiful boondocking spot by the water and a lovely little campground at Petoskey State Park. 

We ate, no, devoured dried cherries and fresh cherry salsa amidst the cherry center of the world and drove by the World’s Largest Cherry Pie.

We took in the beach towns of Traverse City, Elk Rapids, Charlevoix, and Petoskey over the course of Julie’s birthday and our week-long Blog and Itinerary Bootcamp, and then finished or not on our projects, carried on up north into the Upper Peninsula, or the UP, as it is more commonly called. 

We took a ferry boat through the unbelievably blue waters of Lake Huron to visit the carless Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island, which transported us through time. We biked the island and ate more Mexican food.

Julie dipped her feet into the water in a small-town park on Lake Huron before we made our way up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula and partook of the local delicacy of pasties, delighting in every crumb and morsel…much like the state of Michigan itself.

By the time it was time to head to Wisconsin, we felt that even two weeks in the state was not nearly enough. We bid Michigan adieu with our sights set ahead, but our hearts still beating strong in cherry country.