Category: Travel

We’ve just finished the first part of Will’s birthday week celebrations, a trip to Great Wolf Lodge. As an aside, I like to claim the idea of the “birthday week” as my own, though really, it’s something Annette S. and I were in on together. I like to drag out my birthday as long as possible, and I’ve even come close to making my own birthday week celebration stretch into a month. So far be it from me from denying my child the birthday week.

But I digress.

Part one of Will’s birthday week was an over-night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, OH. This is a hotel with a water park built into the middle of it, and this particular one is on the strip of touristy stuff a couple of hours away from here near Cedar Point. Now, given that I don’t swim and just generally don’t like being in water, I personally find the idea of going to a water park about as entertaining as, um, going to a water park. But I’m happy to report that Will, his friend Eli, and Annette had a good time, and, to be honest, I had fun too.

Here’s a little movie:

A few additional random thoughts about our stay:

• While I am certainly no specimen of fitness, many of the pale fatties walking around at this place really boosted my self-image.
• Along these lines, it’s clear that a lot of people have made some very bad choices about tattoos.
• I did actually spend a bit of time in the water– maybe 15, 20 minutes. I rode in the lazy river and I went down one of the water slides once. There wasn’t any water deeper than four feet, so that wasn’t an issue for me. I just don’t get into water, unless I’m bathing in it. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood.
• Happily, the kiddie-oriented water park did feature adult beverages, so as the kids played until the park closed at 10 pm, Annette and I enjoyed beers and margaritas and read magazines.

A good time by one and all.

BTW, the video was made with my flip video camera, which I am very much looking forward to taking to the “Ren Fest” this weekend. Stay tuned….

We had a lovely time “Up North” this past week. Here’s a link to a collection of flickr picts. In no particular order, here are some random thoughts:

• This is the first time I’ve been up near Traverse City when I actually didn’t have a whole lot to do with Traverse City. We were staying out at a place near Lake Ann, and we actually only went into to TC one day, in part because we were up there during the dreaded Cherry Festival. Mostly, we hung around Glen Arbor, Empire, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore.
• My parents rented this gigantic vacation home/cabin called “The Eagles Nest.” We never inquired, but hopefully it had nothing to do with Hitler. Seriously though, it was a great place. Slept 18 people comfortably, great views, very comfy, etc., etc. It made me appreciate cabin aesthetics, too.
• This is the first trip I’ve taken like this where I’ve thought about how it would be cool to have a cabin. Nothing like this place we stayed of course, but just a place a few hours away in the pseudo-wilderness. It’d be nice to have a place like that to go and write and read and hang out. Maybe someday.
• Lotsa hiking around with friends (John and Karen M!) and family, mostly through good weather.
• Some fun golf at a place just down the road from us called Mistwood which turned out to be just a fantastic course. My dad and I played there one day with Will and one of his cousins (just 9 holes, and Will spent most of the time reading), and then the next day me and him for 18, and then my mom and dad the day after that for 9 holes. There’s a lot of great deals up there– my regular golf friends and I might need to check out some of the deals up there.
• It probably was a good idea for me to not have regular Internet access up there. Relaxing. I might have to figure out how to ration my WiFi access in “real” life, too.

And now we’re here in Ypsi-Arbor for the rest of the summer. No European travel this year, but maybe some gardening.

Cows outside of Moomers, up near Traverse City, MI.

Blogging (and most everything else, happily) will be very slow or completely on hold this week as I am with my extended family (my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, kids, etc.) “up north,” in a small town near Traverse City. This is the view from the back porch of this house; very peaceful.

I suppose it’s a good thing too that there isn’t any internet access out at this place—I’m sending this message now from a coffee shop in TC. It’s perhaps a good thing for me to unplug at least a little before I head into full-frontal sabbatical-fueled scholarship/ research work.

Anyway, I might post again, I might not.