The Longest Day

June 21, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year....today took on a new meaning for Jeryl and I as we spent 16 hours traveling from Mackinaw City, Michigan to Jackson, Minnesota. Our total travel time should have taken about 12 hours but with major road construction in Minnesota, our drive time increased drastically.

But let me digress and go back to the beginning. We left Mackinaw City about 5am and headed across the famous Mackinac Bridge leading to the Upper Michigan Pennisula. Fog shrouded the famous landmark as we headed across, the silent water below hidden from our view. This was probably a good thing for me, because I am afraid of heights. My brother Matt watched a documentary on the bridge and told me about grids in the driving lanes that allow wind through to help steady the bridge in gusts. As Jeryl drove along in the right lane, I peered through the fog at the left, inside lane, and saw the grids Matt talked about. It looked like your feet would slip right through, should you be walking across. I was glad we were driving on a "solid" lane. Suddenly out of the fog appeared a blinking sign: Right lane closed, please merge left. My heart sunk and I just knew as Jeryl merged over, the grids would collapse and we would fall to a watery death below. Yes, I really believed this, I am not being dramatic. (Well it was early and the fog can play tricks on the tired mind.) I held on tight as she changed lanes and heard the tires hitting the grids and the weird grinding noise it made. My eyes close tight, I waited for the plunge to begin. But lo and behold, we survived and made it across.

We paid a toll of $3 once we got to the other side. Matt had told me if you were too scared to drive across, someone would drive you across, but Jeryl pointed out that we saw no one ready to jump in and take over for us and even if they did, how would they get back across to help the next "faint-of-heart" driver? The question left unanswered, we headed to Upper Pennisula Michigan.

We learned 2 new things today. One, there is another meaning for the word pastie. As we drove along the beautiful Lake Michigan coast for a good 2 hours, enjoying the fabulous sunrise, we kept seeing little places advertising "pasties." We wondered why there would be such a need for pasties in the middle of nowhere. "Brenda's Tastie Pasties" "Grandma's Old Fashioned Pasties" "Bob's Hot Pasties" We wondered for 2 hours what the heck they were advertising for. Stopping at a McDonald's for breakfast, the first thing I asked the cashier was "what's a pastie?" Jeryl laughed at my abruptness but I really wanted to know. Turns out, a pastie is a piece of crust filled with meat and veggies, sealed and cooked. In the past, the miners would take the pasties for their meals deep in the mine, and still have a tasty meal. Mystery solved, but we still need to try one some day and find out for ourselves just how tasty a pastie really is.

The 2nd thing we learned is the definition for a yooper. We saw t-shirts for sell with the word 'yooper' on it. I asked the clerk and she said it was a take off on living in the upper pennisula. That was the residents' nickname. The upper pennisula is called U.P. and that transfers into the word yooper (rhyming with pooper). I bought myself a t-shirt to commemorate learning a new term. The clerk also told me the yoopers refer to the people who live in the lower pennisula as trolls, because they live "under the bridge." (The Mackinac Bridge) I thought that was cute.

The rest of the day was spent traveling all the way across the state of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In Wisconsin, we stopped in Abbotsville for lunch. This little town was only 25 minutes away from the town of Medford, where my daughter Kristy was born. Sadly we did not have enough time to drive there and let me revisit my memories of when we lived there. I guess it was a good thing we didn't because in Minnesota we ran into the road construction problem.

At one point, it took us an hour and a half to drive only 10 miles. We finally got off the interstate, and using the GPS system on my new I-Phone, Jeryl figured out an alternate route to our destination. As I said in the beginning of this entry, it took us 16 hours to get there, instead of the anticipated 12.

I am sorry this is too long and if you are still here with me, thanks for reading. Tomorrow we head to Mt. Rushmore. I am super excited. This will be our 2nd time to see this great monument. I have started a slide show of our trip, in order of when we see things. So every few days, I will add more pictures to it.

Check out the picture of pigzilla. If you read this and want to know what the heck a pigzilla is, email and ask............happy trails.........R&J