Friday: Left at 1am central time. Arrived at 3pm eastern time. Rested and unpacked. Dexter played with his new rocking chair Great Grandma and Great Grandpa gave him for his birthday.
Saturday: The Grands showed us around Escanaba and Gladstone. We hit St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores and scored some great finds. Ties for Ashton, an umbrella stroller, books, Mr. Potato head x3 for $1.50 total, and a suit for Dexter that will fit when he is about 3. Then we played Ripple, hand and foot, and 5 crowns. Ashton and I even beat Grandma and Grandpa at Hand and Foot.
Sunday: We attended church at the Escanaba Branch and had a fun lingerlonger. The branch was small. Relief Society had 7 sisters including me in there, and had only 12 chairs set up. The meeting house was small too. It had 1 large room that served as the chapel, Sunday school rooms, and the cultural hall for the linger longer. Then we played more games.
Monday: Road trip up to Lake Superior. We stopped at Munising Falls, Miner's Falls and Miner's Castle. We stopped and ate at a "hole in the wall" Thia/Chinese restaurant that was really good. Then we drove to Marquette, MI to see the ore docks. On our way we came across Lakenland, a sculpture park. The artist was very talented.
Tuesday: We had lunch at Alta's, a branch member. It ended up being with "Chicago Tom" and all of the missionaries in the district too. After that, Grandma and Grandpa had a district meeting and funeral they needed to attend, so Ashton and I just hung out at their apartment till they were done. We played a good game of hand and foot. Ashton won. Then we ate at the American Legion Center for dinner with another couple from the branch for Taco Tuesday. Afterwards, we took the Grands geocaching (of course).
Wednesday: We left for home. Left at 1:30am eastern time, and arrived home at 12pm central time. We drove through Illinos for about 10 minutes so that I can say I've been to Illinois. We went through 4 different states. Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. We almost went across the river into Omaha just so we could say 5 states, but we wanted to be home. Once we were unloaded, Ashton crashed.
We had a great time in UP (Upper Peninsula) with all the "yoopers". They are quite the bunch of people. I loved listening to the speakers in church with their great accent: "owe" sound in place of the "o" sound. And a funny observation, a common male name is Tom and all of it's forms. So when in doubt just ask for Tom. It is beautiful country and looks a lot like the mountains in Idaho, just flat.
Dexter traveled well. He had a hard time on Monday because we were in and out of the car a lot and he was tired of being in his seat. But for the long ride to and from, he did stellar. Of course a large portion of the drive was while he was asleep. Still, even when he was awake, he did wonderfully.
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