a Mitten full of ice cream

Josh and Betsy have wanted to introduce me to their favorite Bay City ice cream shop,
Mama Lupo's for over a year now...
Mama Lupo's ice cream is indeed a tasty treat.
Their extra cold freezers yield an extra firm scoop--
an excellent score in my book of ice cream rankings.

I may or may not have eaten ice cream every day of my Michigan Labor Day vacation...

Of course I had to introduce Vicky to my favorite brand of ice cream (served at the wonderful Heather 'n Holly candy shop downtown): Ashby's Sterling.

Although I had pre-decided my flavor pick would be Cherry Amaretto... once I got to the shop, I was reminded of all sorts of other amazing Ashby's flavors, and I settled on the super duper chocolate-y Michigan Pothole.

Of course a trip to the Lake isn't complete without some sort of frozen sweet treat
(even if it was sweatshirt weather).
We checked out Petoskey's Bob-In Again frozen custard shop.
Bob-In's custard was a premium experience (though so were the prices...).

Additionally, Brian invited friends and family over to his house for root beer floats and cookies Sunday evening after church. Um... I couldn't say no to that!

sooo:

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday ice cream stops.

Obviously once I returned to Pennsylvania I enacted an immediate freeze on ice-cream consumption
until further notice.

Petoskey

Abel liked visiting Lake Michigan at Petoskey State Park.

Kix

I bought a box of Kix recently, and was sadly disappointed with its contents.

Kix do not taste the same as they did when I was a kid.

And just in case you're about to say, "That's because you forgot what they tasted like," or "that's just because you have grown-up taste buds now,"-- it's not:

I conferred with two of my sisters who whole-heartedly agree that

Kix are not the same as they were when we were kids.

General Mills changed the recipe.

(something about whole grains I think)

and:

we kids didn't test and approve them.

(I don't know about the moms)

Kix used to be lightly sweetened, yellowish (relatively natural looking, though) balls of corn cereal that lightly crisp-crunched in one's mouth.

Now, Kix are grayish-yellow (probably no traces of food coloring at all), hard-crunchy, wanna-be puffed circle balls (they're not even truly round) that have a meal-y after taste.

:(

Although the orange boxes with classic blue letters are still plastered with the slogan

"Kid tested. Mother approved."

the kid part isn't accurate.

That's this big kid's opinion anyway.

And I don't plan to buy another box of modern Kix for a very long time.

the bigger bitty buddy

(waiting in line at the non-Bridge Walk)

Nephew Abel isn't quite as bitty as he used to be six months ago...

he remains, however, 100% adored by all of his aunties, uncles, and grandparents.

The Mighty Mac Disappointment of 2017

The Mackinac Bridge

This year, Betsy and I made plans to walk the Mighty Mac on Labor Day.

My friend Vicky joined me for my Labor Day vacation in Michigan (a trip we had been planning for over a year), and since she's a runner, I suggested she might want to check out the early morning run over the Mackinac Bridge before the walk begins on Labor Day.

Vicky's bridge run went well, but, unfortunately, our bridge walk was a different story...

Due to recent terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security made the decision to shuttle all walkers across the bridge in certified shuttles (i.e. no passenger car "shuttles" allowed on the bridge).

troopers were busy directing traffic at busy intersections near I-75

cars parked EVERYWHERE-- and it appeared most people carpooled

Unfortunately, the shuttles only provided space for about 25,000 walkers to participate in the bridge walk. We were not among the 25,000 who were allowed to participate during the allotted time. When the shuttles stopped running, we were still over 1/2 mile away from the shuttle pickup location, part of an incredibly long line of thousands of want-to-be-walk-the-bridge-participants.

In the words of the officer who delivered the news to our section of the waiting crowd, we didn't "make it":
"Folks, not everyone is going to be able to walk the Bridge today; I'm sorry, but you're not going to make it."

on our way to the back of the line at 8:54am
(after inching our way through traffic/parking/walking since 7:45am)

There were hundreds of sad, frustrated, disappointed Michiganders last Monday morning. And, if they were like us, they woke up between 4 and 5am in order to drive up to the bridge well in advance of the 10:30am final start time for the five-mile walk.

I am very thankful for our troopers and so many who worked to ensure the 70th annual bridge walk was a safe event, however, it was definitely sad not to be able to walk the bridge. I was anticipating another fun walk.

Instead of walking the bridge, we wound up walking a few miles not on the bridge (there were a few thousand vehicles parked EVERYWHERE as you can imagine...), and eating beef pasties from a shop in downtown Mackinac City.

To try to ease our disappointment and make the most of a bum situation, we drove to Petoskey State Park, and spent some time at the Lake.



P.S. And I would just like to publicly say the news report I read referencing "No more than 10 complaints" does not seem like an accurate assessment of the State's major fail on Monday! [I'm pretty sure James was not standing in the same line I was standing in...]