R and J in the USA

The next morning was what Julie considered to be the beginning of her birthday celebration, despite her birthday still being one day away. There were many options for 5Ks in Michigan at the end of July. We could have gone nearly anywhere in the state to find a good race, and there were a handful of other 5Ks that might have been more convenient for hitting all the places in Michigan we had wanted to hit. But, no matter how many potential itineraries we considered, Julie could not shake her excitement to run the 5K in Bay City. Why? Well, the name of it is the Labadie Ribfest 5K. For those of you who know Julie, no further explanation is needed. To get to run a 5K amidst the smell of BBQ and finish the expenditure sampling a ridiculous amount of award-winning ribs? Yeah. Where do we sign up?

We showed up to the race site in the morning while the various rib vendors were still getting set up. Julie chatted with one of the vendors from California, who encouraged us to stop by their booth for ribs after the race. Julie had no problem assuring him that would happen. We ran the race alongside the Saginaw River (you can read about it in our 5K section) and, after ever so patiently waiting for the Ribfest to officially open, we made our way in like we owned the place.

Now, if you know Julie and Ryan, you know our strategy in such a situation. We had to start by getting the lay of the land and then making a plan of attack. This is ribs we’re talking about. Being there at the very beginning of the fest there were basically no lines, so we were able to walk up to each booth, get the hard sell from each booth’s hype man, suss it out, ask our questions, and develop our strategy. Even though it would be more expensive, we were going to, like the trip itself, cast a wide net and grab a little from each place. We got the rib sampler that comes with three or four ribs from the first few places and started chowing. We started eating and evaluating. We kept track of rib style, rib tenderness, and rib sauce, compiling our hierarchy of favorites as we went.

There was a place for attendees to vote on best ribs and we took our job seriously. We stuffed our faces (let’s be honest, Ryan ate responsibly and Julie stuffed her face) and kept plenty of leftovers to last us for the next few days’ meals. We eventually got ribs from all but two places and some BBQ chicken from one more. While we were entering our vote for best overall rib and best sauce, we were chatting with a gentleman standing at the table. We mentioned we had gone to all but two rib places. The gentleman said he was the proprietor of one of the ones we hadn’t gone to yet and wanted us to taste his ribs before casting our vote. We generously agreed to eat a few free ribs. He brought them back and we ate them. He graciously told us it was okay if we didn’t change our vote. We felt bad to cast our vote in front of him, but, though his ribs were good, our prior favorites were still the winners.

We left Bay City and the shores of Lake Huron with our bellies and our refrigerator full and set out on the drive up towards another bay city on another Great lake – Traverse City on Lake Michigan.

Although nearly every minute of the trip so far had been filled with one local, unique experience after another, Julie, a movie lover, had been craving to go to a movie for a while. Julie knew that, on most nights, between the state-specific activities we had planned and the fact that Ryan was never in the specific mood to see a movie, going to a movie was a dim prospect. It being her birthday the next day, this was probably one of the rare moments she could make a play for a movie date. Ryan generously obliged, as a birthday present, and we went to the AMC in Traverse City and took in the summer blockbuster Twisters. Julie was very happy.

There being so many places in Upper Michigan to spend a couple of days totally relaxed and in awe of the beauty, we had considered Sleeping Bear Dunes, Beaver Island, and Traverse City as locations to spend two nights bookending Julie’s birthday. While doing some research, Julie stumbled upon some pictures of an inland lake, Torch Lake, just a few miles from the Great Lake Michigan. The pictures looked like Caribbean water! “I wanna go there!” We found an affordable county campground just down the road from Torch Lake that had openings for the next two nights. We booked them. 

This gave us a dunes conundrum. If we went to Torch Lake for Julie’s birthday, it wouldn’t make sense to circle back down to Sleeping Bear Dunes this time around. So, we left what would have been an undoubtedly gorgeous sight to see on the list of “places we missed and still want to see” and headed to our campground near Torch Lake.

Boy, were we pleasantly surprised when we arrived. It turns out the campground also had a beach, right on Grand Traverse Bay. As soon as we arrived at the campsite and climbed down the stairs to the beach where folks were lined up to watch the sunset, we realized we were in one of the best kept secrets in the USA. Maybe it’s not a secret to everyone, or even to most, but we certainly didn’t know about how gorgeous Grand Traverse Bay was until we saw it for ourselves.

Being from Rochester, NY, on the shores of the eastern most Great Lake, Lake Ontario, we knew that a Great Lake was, well, pretty great. But we had no idea that a Great Lake could be as pristine and stunning as this. Lake Ontario is, well, not pristine, shall we say? The waters aren’t crystal clear. Here, they were that and more. Now, this was a bay of Lake Michigan, not the Lake itself, but we would soon learn that Lake Michigan, just like Grand Traverse Bay, had the clearest, most brilliantly blue waters we had ever seen. And the sunset lit up the sky with brilliant hues of purple and pink. What a place to be and what a place to celebrate a birthday, especially for someone who loves birthdays as much as Julie.

After a gorgeous sunset over the water, Julie very excited for a birthday the next morning. The images of that gorgeous sunset emblazoned in our minds, we both fell into one of the best nights of sleep we’d had in a while.