Back To The Future

So Michigan it is!!! Yes, we decided to overwinter in a place that gets colder, has more snow and a longer winter than PA. And no, we're not nuts. Well possibly a little bit, but I don't think that had much to do with our choice. So we headed back from Wyoming..back to a spot that we spent a week at a little over two months ago. We also did it much faster than we did on the way out, taking only nine days to cover the same ground we just covered in over two months . It was a weird feeling to drive most of the days but once we decided to actually do this we were also pretty excited to get there and see what the scene was like. Although we did rush a bit on the way back (rush by our definition is apparently to drive more than five hours a week), we did get to camp on an island on the Mississippi River and spend a few nights along Lake Michigan on the southern side of the Upper Peninsula, a spot that we missed on the way out.



Opting to spend the winter in Michigan rather than in the southwest like we "planned" wasn't just a split second decision though…well it kind of was but it was a confident split second decision. It really was an area that we both felt we could possibly start something new, with all the things that we like to have around us, some of which we have yet to have in a homebase. Beautiful natural areas right outside our door, lakes just about everywhere you look, the largest freshwater source in the world at our fingertips, a decent job market, four microbreweries, a beach town feel. Well that's our list so far…though it may grow the longer we stay, who knows. For now, we're just trying out something that Kev and I have never done together in the ten years we've been married. We figured we might as well… we've got nothing to lose by trying.

So we have an eight month lease on a small cottage on Arbutus Lake, about six and a half miles south of Traverse City. The lake is actually five small lakes connected together, the cottage sitting on the south bank of the southernmost lake.



During the summer the cottage rents by the week so we have all of the conveniences of a summer vacation rental at our disposal…row boats, motor boats, docks, a small beach. Unfortunately we know that there we will only have a couple months to take advantage of it, but something is better than nothing, right?? And we always have ice fishing (beer drinking) in the winter which we have heard is a lot of fun. And don't forget ice skating and cross country skiing, not that I have ever really done either…so if I don't take this opportunity to try it, well, I should just curl up under my blanket and succumb to winter blues. Luckily we already have ice skates that we got a few years ago but never really had the chance to use in PA so that's one hurdle out of the way. Now we just need to pick up some cross country skis and a fishing license, which is cheaper with Michigan residency so yesterday I became an official Michigan resident…license, voter registration, a Michigan plate on my new set of wheels, which is probably (definitely) the nicest car I've ever had.



I mean, I'm 31 years old, don't I deserve it? I even promised Kev that I would do my best to keep it the nicest car I've ever had. Now all I need now is a job. But that will come and, quite honesty, I barely even started looking yet. Luckily it's a town driven on tourism so the service industry is pretty steady and I'm definitely not opposed to slinging coffee again for a while. But, in reality, I'm not really opposed to doing anything for a while to get things going and get our feet on the ground. Who knows what will happen, where we'll end up working, what we'll end up doing. All I know is that we have eight months to figure it out so it's worth giving it a solid chance…and if everything works out hopefully we'll still be in Traverse City next year at this time. And if not, well, the life we lived for the last three and a half months wasn't too shabby either.