Tuesday, December 5, 2017

late summer family road trip

Ahoy,

Over Labor Day weekend, in my never-ending quest to see more of Michigan, I arranged a family road trip to Holland, MI. It's a little town known for it's early Dutch settlers. Car 1 held K, Z, A, and me. Car 2 held my mom, dad, aunt, and cousin. We stopped at Warren Dunes State Park for a hike, which turned out to be much more of a crawl through the sand dunes. My mom invited her sister and our cousin. They didn't know what they were in for.

The sand dunes along the Michigan adjacent shore of Lake Michigan are unlike terrain you will find across the way in Chicago. These were proper hills that set you back with every step. Slogging up the sand was a struggle. You could see the skyline of Chicago from the top. I chose a hike that took us up and down some dunes in a forested area. There were really sandy parts and some more dirt lined paths. We haven't really encountered any hikes like that elsewhere. The loop back took us along the beach. Some folks said that was their highlight. My highlight was seeing my aunt struggling along. At one point she lost her phone in the sand. She was sliding down on her butt, because it was so much steeper than she was comfortable with. I still remember the way my dad laughed when she realized she had lost her phone. I don't think we've ever heard him laugh so raucously.

We went to New Holland Brewery for dinner. A turned out to be familiar with the brand and is a big fan of their dragon's milk. It's actually a pretty well known brewery we had all had before. We all got flights that I'm pretty sure filled us up more than the food did. We got my dad a flight, but he really only likes Tsingtao. What a trooper. It started to rain and we were seated outside, all the staff scrambled to get everyone under covered sections.

When we were kids, my parents took us on a family vacation every summer. We went to Wisconsin, Florida, Boston, California, etc. And then our summers filled up with school things. In retrospect, it was really remarkable that they were able to make arrangements for our trips given that there was no internet or google maps and they had limited English proficiency. Now the tables our turned, because it's up to me and my brother to arrange the logistics for all our trips and they just follow along. I hope it's less stressful for them that way, but it's also nice to be able to provide the 'service' for them. At some point we were kids and they wanted to show us the world, so to say, now it's me who wants to show them what's out there.

best,
jt