Back to the Lower 48... (Bethany)

Good evening, friends...


Today I loved Canada again, if only for her complex metric system, which came back to me quickly, and her quirky locals (you're gonna wont some sauce with dose carrots, eh?). We left our basement room in Michael's By-the-Falls Hotel, a seedy joint redeemed for me by the well-worn bottle-blonde barmaid who kept me in very strong G&Ts last night as I blogged and my family slept. Her name was Donna and she was straight out of a Tom Waits song. I loved her and she called me sweetie-pie.

After a swell swim in the surprisingly nice pool, we ran out of Niagara Falls like we were on fire, swearing never to set foot in such a tourist trap again. The minute we were out of town the grey skies literally parted and the sun was out for the rest of the day. We spent the day driving through Ontario along a fine selection of Great Lakes (Erie, Ontario, Huron), over massive bridges (hurl-inducing for me, whose greatest fear, second only to centipedes, is falling off bridges), on a cool, bright-blue day that reminded me of my favorite days in Scotland.

We crossed back into Michigan in the middle of the afternoon, drove through Flint (rusty Buicks) and Saginaw (muscle cars and fishing outfitters), and straight up to Mackinaw City through miles and miles of brush and scrubby cow pastures, roadside wind-rows and irrigation ponds, through the most beautiful sunset I've seen since a doozy on Plum Island a few weeks ago, and on into the night.

A quick re-cap of things I learned while driving through Michigan:

• there are sufficient quantities of venison to fully stock the “Deer Jerky Outlet” (that’s a real place)


• don’t drive a Toyota with California plates through Flint


• all-you-can-eat Ponderosa Steak House buffet + 12-hour drive = nasty belly ache


• you can buy a sweet bow-hunting setup for $239 at Bob’s Bow and Boat Bonanza


• the muscle car is not dead


• the real estate of my dreams is a parking lot between a Wal-Mart and a yellow water tower with a smiley face on it...
  

At last I saw a shimmering bridge rising up at the end of the dark road, a beautiful sight indeed, and after some very pleasant pleasantries with a meaty desk clerk, we are checked into our clean and over-decorated room at the Econo-Lodge (floral carpet! plaid wallpaper! striped bedspread! aarrrggghhh!). So tomorrow we will enjoy the sights around town and then it's a marathon drive to South Dakota. Truckers got nothing on me.

So goodnight all you moonlight ladies...