The Vacation is Burning! (Finally Some Relaxation!)

August 7, 207. After a large lunch at Pickelman's Pantry, the 6 of us decided to spend the night in Grand Marais, MI, which is located on the shore of lovely and tumultuous Lake Superior. We got the two last rooms at a hotel called the North Shore Lodge. It had old brown shag carpet and 70's wood paneling on the walls, but each room had two double beds and the hotel is literally right on the beach. It also boasts an old crappy indoor pool and hot tub, all for a mere $80/night, so we were totally in white trash heaven. Every time Ryan and I have gone to his cabin, he's brought us all to this beach. It has a huge breaker wall that is perfect for diving on days that the Lake isn't boasting 8' plus waves. Last year Ryan and I literally body surfed on a small craft advisory day. The waves were at least 8' and it was deliriously fun, if not a little bit scary. This year the Lake was a bit calmer, but warmer. At least 65 degrees, which is WARM for Superior. Animae and Jay and Michael's dog Opus - a ridiculously adorable Beagle - were romping in the water with us and chasing each other up and down the beach at break neck speeds. The sun was high in the sky and everyone else was hanging out on the beach. A great morning. But, where to go after check out at 11am?

The previous year at the cabin, the generator went kaput and we had to get it fixed. We took it to this town called Curtis which was a few miles south of Newberry. Curtis is a great little vacation town. As I remembered it, it had two lakes. I kept saying "We should go to Curtis because it has TWO lakes!" all morning and pretty soon everyone thought Curtis sounded just fine. So, we were off to Curtis, which we found out actually has THREE lakes - North Manistique, Manistique and South Manistique. We stopped at the log cabin general store in town and picked up some supplies and they told us where to look for waterfront cottages for rent on Manistique Lake. The entire coast of the lake alternates between private homes and little cottage resorts. The Red Cross was housing many of the displaced evacuees and fire fighters at these cottages, so we had a hard time finding vacancy. Finally a woman who ran a place that was at full occupancy suggested a place called the Buckhorn Resort. She said it wasn't fancy, but it was reasonable, run by a really nice man and most likely had a vacancy. So we gave it a try.

Eureka! Due to a cancellation there was a 3 bedroom cottage with bath and kitchen and living room, new grill, deck and use of a fishing boat with trolling motor available for $78/night. Say what!? And Scott, who runs the place, was just the sweetest man imaginable. He went everywhere on the property in a golf cart and talked in a slow, "easy does it" manner. He recently lost his wife, and spent his days taking care of the property and fishing. He seemed genuinely happy to have us city folk and our crazy two dogs on the property. We booked it for 3 nights. Strangely enough, the cancellation on the cottage was due to the original booker having a heart attack, and the person he got to replace him had to have hip surgery. I hope both of those gents recovered, but I sure am glad we got the cottage. Finally, some relaxation! Jay and Michael and I blew up the floaties that Michael brought - all of us were practically passing out from light-headedness when Scott came up and said "I got a compressor that'd make that job a lot easier..." Hilarious. Then we set them afloat on Big Manistique Lake. That's pretty much all I had wanted to do since we arrived in the UP. Float with my friends and a Molson Canadian and a book on the warm lake under the hot sun. And it was divine...

I didn't leave the property for three days. We played charades at night, woke up late, made breakfast, read and played with the dogs, floated in the lake and made a wonderful grilled dinner every evening. We all talked and enjoyed each other's company. It was abbreviated, but we did get some actual vacation in with our friends without any disturbances. The fire kept raging north of us, we checked on it every day on the fire hotline, and Ryan was able to get permission to go back and lock up the cabin. We checked in with Daisy and my mom in IL. Her surgery went well on Friday morning and she would be able to go home on Sunday morning. Everything seemed to be going just fine. Our time was too short, but great, nonetheless.

Saturday morning, we reluctantly packed up our stuff, had a last lunch together at Pickelman's again, and said our sad goodbyes. Shelly was coming back to IL with us, and the Boston Boys decided to take the scenic route home, all the way through Canada. So, each car pulled out of the parking lot at Pickelman's, the boys heading east, and ours heading west. We were all a little tanner, a little more relaxed and a little sad to see our time up north come to an end.

The Vacation is Burning! (Run For Your Lives!!)

August 6, 2007. Ryan's birthday. First thing that morning, Shelly called us to tell us that her flight to Detroit had been canceled. After about 20 minutes of us all freaking out, she was able to get a flight to Flint, MI later that afternoon. That was good. Flint is actually closer to the cabin than Detroit. Problem solved. We packed our stuff and Animae into the car, kissed Daisy, Grammi and Grandpa goodbye and headed off for MI. Somehow we managed to avoid Chicago Monday morning rush hour - maybe our luck was turning around!

About one hour south of Flint, while listening to NPR, we heard a local report that a huge forest fire was raging out of control in the UP. Uh-oh. In Luce County. UH-OH. 6 miles north of the town of Newberry. RUH-ROH, Scooby. Specifically along County Road 407... WHAT!? Short of giving specific GPS coordinates, that pretty much described EXACTLY where Ryan's cabin is located. So, Shelly was in flight, and Ben, Jay and Michael were in a car somewhere in Ontario on their way to MI and apparently the cabin was on fire. Ry and I spent the next 30 minutes trying to decide what to do, and what to tell our friends. Finally, we remembered we had the number of the lake resort across the 407 from the cabin. Ryan called there. They were still on their land and frankly seemed unconcerned about the whole fire thing, so we decided to just keep on truckin' and hope for the best. We picked up Shelly, got to Mackinaw City around 9pm and got some groceries, and headed over the bridge to the UP.

Around 11pm, we pulled into Newberry, MI. The air smelled like a huge campfire. Instantly, our hair, clothes and the inside of the car stunk of smoke. We stopped at the local Holiday gas station and the kid behind the counter told us that the fire was up to around 15,000 acres and he was sure we wouldn't be able to make it back to the cabin, especially at night (the pic above was taken from approximately where the gas station is, looking North). Several of the roads north of town had been shut down by the state police and DNR. We decided to try anyway. The road we were on was shut down going North, but we were able to turn onto 407. As we neared the cabin, the air actually cleared and the smoke was far less prevalent. This seemed hopeful. We got to the cabin - it was quiet and still, but all seemed well. Shelly and Ryan and I started unpacking the car and began the task of getting the cabin ready for living. Ryan's Uncle Bob lives in Newberry and spends a lot of his time living at the cabin. He's a pig. A complete and utter pig. His mess this year was particularly grand. I felt a little disheartened and Shelly, bless her, offered to work on the cabin while Ryan and I went to meet the Boston Boys in town to lead them back to the cabin.

We met the guys at the gas station in Newberry around midnight. They'd also talked to the gas station dude, and were a little concerned that we were possibly driving into our fiery deaths. We assured everyone it was ok and we all drove back to the 407. This time, just an hour later, the smoke had shifted and was pretty thick on the road. At one point, Michael said "There sure are a lot of bugs out tonight... Wait, that's ASH!" And he was right. Still we pushed on. When we all got to the cabin, we were all exhausted from hours and hours of road trip. We all stumbled around the property in the dark and looked at the lake. It was really low. The sky was really hazy. Definitely not like it usually is. But we were all really glad to be together, so we basically stayed up all night to celebrate Ry's birthday, and drink some of the duty free liquor Michael picked up at the Canadian border. We all fell asleep around daybreak, except for Ryan who took the opportunity to go fishing. Dude, when you love to fish, you love to fish...

About noon the next day, we all woke up to a large Chinook helicopter flying very low over the cabin. Within an hour, several helicopters and water planes had flown over, some with huge water and flame retardant buckets beneath. Michael, Jay and Ryan decided to head into town to get some more groceries and get the news on the fire. They left. Ben had coincidentally packed a book for the trip about forest fires, called "Fire!" by Sebastian Junger before he knew he was driving into one, and I perversely decided to curl up on my bunk and start reading it. Ben was reading another book on his bunk and Shelly took a dip in the lake. About 15 minutes later, I hear Michael's truck pull back in and hear Michael and Jay start yelling "We have to evacuate, pack everything, we have to get out NOW!" For a second I thought they were kidding, but then I realized there was no way they could have gotten to town and back in that amount of time, so they'd obviously been stopped on the way. By the time they got from the truck to the cabin, I'd gotten off the bunk and gotten dressed in like 20 seconds.

We all started grabbing things and throwing them into bags, suitcases, whatever we could find. Then I realized Ryan wasn't with Michael and Jay. They'd left him at the turn off into town because the cops there had tried to keep them from coming back to get us. Ryan had tried to explain the situation to get permission to come back and Michael and Jay had taken the "screw you" attitude and jumped back in the truck before they could be stopped by the authorities, who'd brilliantly asked them if they were the people who didn't speak English and had refused to leave their cabin when the evacuation order went out... Um, no. Apparently, the whole area had already been evacuated the evening before, and we'd cluelessly driven right into the evacuated area afterwards. And no one had known we were back there, because the cabin has no electricity, phone, etc. It's just simply not on the grid. As we packed, we noticed that planes were starting to buzz the cabin. One came in so low, it rattled the windows and sounded like it was going to crash into us. Obviously, they were trying to send us a message - one we'd been too thick to get earlier in the day, something like: "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, IDIOTS!!"

The next 10 minutes are sort of a blur. We were all very on task, but scattered. For example, I was very clear about getting Animae and her bed and bag of food in the car, but forgot her bowls and leash. I also realized when Michael announced that his car was full and the rest would have to be packed in Ryan's car, that I was going to have to drive Ryan's car out of the fire zone. Then the "Where are his car keys?" panic set in until I found them. I ran up and down the path to the car about 52 times, constantly realizing something else I forgot - the last being my purse with all my money, ID and personal effects in it. I'd actually started the car and was driving away before I realized I didn't have it. At one point I was panicking about how to close and lock up the cabin, until I realized that if it burned, it really wouldn't matter whether the door was locked or not. And even if the cabin didn't burn, we were likely the only breathing human beings that weren't emergency workers for about a 4 mile square area. So off we sped, about 13 hours after arriving. Along the 407, we drove past fire fighters in their yellow suits and hard hats setting up the fire line. The only others on the road were state troopers and electric company workers cutting the power lines so that the transformers wouldn't blow, should the fire burn that far. As we drove to the turn off to Newberry, we saw a beet red Ryan walking in his flip flops toward us. Abandoned by Michael and Jay, he had attempted to WALK back to the cabin. He was a little upset. And sun burned. But back with the tribe. So, here we all were. Between us all, we'd traveled approximately 7,700 total miles to get to the cabin, considering Shelly's origination point was Honolulu. We'd encountered numerous setbacks, but darn it, we'd made it, and now, we were all displaced in the UP. Just great. As Michael said, "What's next, locusts?"

The Vacation is Burning! (Prologue)

I've been AWOL for awhile, I know. My Aunt Margaret and a few others expressed a desire for more blogs, so after a summer off, I'm back, with a longish tale about our summer vacation. I'm going to split it into sections, and roll it out over the next few days as it's kind of a doozy. So, today I give you: "The Vacation is Burning! (Prologue)."

As some of you may know, since we've been together, Ry and I have taken a yearly vacation to his family's cabin in the UP of Michigan. It's always a good time - quiet, serene - a place and time to let the rush and bustle of the city drift away and reconnect with nature and each other. We take Daisy and let her off the leash. We swim, play cards, listen to country music on the radio. Ryan fishes. We grill and read books. That's about it. On these trips, we also make time to see each other's families. Everyone lives in the Midwest, so we try and see as many people as we can over a two week period, which means we get to drive the circle tour around the Great Lakes region each year. There's only so much time, and there are always people we want to see but miss. It's a lot to fit into two weeks, but we give it our best shot.

This year, we planned our vacation as such: we would leave NYC on August 1st, picking up our friends' dog, Animae, in Brooklyn on the way out of the city and make it half way to IL that day. Our plan was to get to a hotel in time to watch "Rescue Me" that night. Then we'd push on to IL the next morning, see my friend/ex Eddie at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, then get to my mom's late the night of the 2nd. We'd planned to stay with the parentals and see some family over the next 4 days, and then drive the morning of the 6th to MI to pick up our friend Shelly from the airport in Detroit. Then the three of us would drive to the cabin, arriving early that evening (Ryan's Birthday, actually), where we'd meet up with our friends Ben, Jay and Michael who were driving from Boston to spend the week at the cabin with us. We all were to spend a relaxing week at the cabin, with Ryan and I taking a day or two to visit with his sister, brother-in-law and nephew who were also up in the UP on vacation that week, then I'd hitch a ride home to NYC with the Boston boys on the 12th and be back at work on the 14th. Ryan would stay another week in MI with Shelly, and spend a few more days with his family, including his dad, and then drop Shelly off at the airport, and come home alone with Animae on the 18th. This way we'd get to see just about everybody. Easy Shmeasy, right? Well, let's just say pretty much NOTHING happened as we planned. I'm going to break this thing down into 4 parts: The Road to IL, Daisy has a Hernia, Run for Your Lives, Finally Some Relaxation! Hope you enjoy it!