A.K.A. My last official Michigan-is-awesome post before I bore you tears.

The Views

The Sand

The daring your husband to jump in a 59° degree lake and your son taking you up on it too.

The People

Can you believe the woman in that picture is my grandmother and that girl’s great grandmother?!? Why I didn’t inherit those genes is beyond me. She has fewer lines across her forehead than I do mine. She’s one heck of a lady and I adore her.

And of course, I could go on and on about the fresh fruit and Meijers and lake breezes and the hundreds of other pictures I could post that show it’s beauty but I think you should just go. Because Michigan – and yes I’m biased because I think of it as home – is simply wonderful. I love it so much I wear a necklace that maps my favorite part. And now I’ll stop telling you how awesome it is and overloading the blog with pictures of our vacation. Suffice it to say, I love it and I’m glad we get to go back next year.

Do you have a place where you just fit? Where is it and what do you love about it?

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One day we decided to visit our home town treasures. We had lunch at Country Dairy (and ice cream, of course) and visited Lewis’. And fed deer.

We also fed a camel, donkeys, goats, cows, and ostriches* (the last one we just put the food down and let them peck at it). *I stand corrected – emus.

There was a roping station:

And duck races:

And even a spiderweb to climb:

It’s a fun little place to visit and when you are done petting (feeding) the animals you can wash your hands really well and get farm fresh produce or baked goods. In our case, we got peaches and some bake at home peach pie. I won’t even tell you how much I ate of it. So good. I could list all the things I miss about Michigan but their produce…oh, I miss the produce.

Anyway…it’s true – we still pay good money to feed deer.

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When I was a little kid, my grandma used to take me to Deer Park.  There was a train and deer.  People went and rode the train and bought food out of those 25¢ machines to feed the deer. For fun. We still do stuff like that where I’m from but I’ll show pictures of that tomorrow.

Somewhere between being a little, little kid and a 5th grader Deer Park turned into an amusement park.  I remember because one of the perks of being on safety patrol all year was that you got to take a field trip to Michigan’s Adventure and if you were really, really brave you rode The Corkscrew.  Between then and now it’s been purchased by the same people who own Cedar Point (best roller coaster park EVER) and Valley Fair (for those Wisco and Minnesota locals) and turned to a decently sized place to go and get your thrill on.

When Jess and I first got together I made him ride the Shivering Timbers (a 2 mile wooden roller coaster that goes 65 mph with drops over 200 ft) until he was green.  Literally, green.  I thought he was going to spew on my shoes.  He survived.  I married him.  I don’t make him ride the Shivering Timbers anymore.

This year, the V was big enough to ride two (another was shut down for the day) and we bounced quite a bit between them.  That girl isn’t afraid of any ride made by man.  Her biggest frustration was that she’s still an 1 1/2 inches too short for the “big” roller coaster that mom wanted to go on.  She called me a wimp because I hated one of “her” sized rides. And because I hate the ferris wheel.

Jess made the best of having to ride a roller coaster (V and A weren’t tall enough to ride without adults) but lucky for him, A wasn’t that much of a thrill ride fan.

I felt so bad after he got off that log ride. He was so mad about being wet and crying but another little girl thought it was from being scared (he was a little of that too) and she chickened out. Her parents weren’t happy with me after they had waited in line for so long. Oops.

It was a great day. Drying my dress underneath one of those automatic hand dryers after a midday rain shower and too much carnival food added to the wonder of it all.

What was your favorite amusement park/fair ride as a kid?

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