Next up on the summer odyssey was our annual trip to Michigan. I got back from Glacier National Park at 10pm on July 23rd, and by 2pm on the 24th, we were headed north, staying in Pennsylvania before heading the rest of the way to Michigan. We had rented a house with Laura’s brother, sister, Dad and Stepmom on a small inland lake called Round Lake. Good news: I can show you exactly (or relatively, at least) where we went. If you don’t know someone from Michigan or you aren’t from Michigan yourself, you may not have heard of the legendary Michigan hand map.

We were headed to an Airbnb in National City, which, as far as I could tell was neither a city nor national but rather a small intersection. The place was just a bit inland from Tawas City, which is at least almost a city. Here, let me show you where we were.

With this map, we were bound to succeed, and we arrived in the evening of July 25th. The house sat right on a smaller inland lake, and the gazebo area on the deck provided fantastic views of the lake.

A second reason to hang out on this elevated area was that the picnic table closer to the lake had been pronounced overrun with bugs by our resident authorities on Michigan bugs.

When Diane saw the table and the assorted spiders that had made the table home, she commented that she should have brought her Home Defense, which is normally used to establish an anti-bug perimeter around a house rather than to eradicate all insects and arachnids living around an outdoor table. I had never even heard of someone using using Home Defense for this purpose rather than a more conventional bug killer, like Raid, so I thought, “Wow, that’s a little over the top” as I turned to Gayle for verification of my perspective. But I found her nodding along with Diane as if to confirm that we should have nuked the entire site with Home Defense upon arrival. This wasn’t the first time I had observed this pathological fear of spiders in Michigan, a fear which is all the more surprising because there are no venomous spiders common to Michigan. My observation of Michigan’s arachnophobia was supported by more than anecdotal evidence, with a report stating that Michiganders feared spiders even more than holes in the ground (?!) and there was a local news story about this very fear of bugs.

In spite of our failure to secure the border against all manner of creepy crawlies, the kids had a blast. One reason we chose a small inland lake farther from the Detroit area was John’s warning that aggressive motorboats on the Detroit area lakes constantly drive at murderously fast speeds, with negligent drivers who would plow over kayaks and swimmers, slaughtering the children as they attempted to play in the water. These risks could have been exaggerated, but who wants to be on the wrong side of calling that bluff? Our lake, Round Lake, was nice and quiet, and the biggest threat to the children was that they would kill each other fighting over the two kayaks (or maybe the spiders lurking in the kayaks). Somehow, the kids found a way to cooperate.

We later found that one of the kayaks was missing a seal in the back, and the two-person approach caused it to fill up with water.

On the north side of the lake was a small sand bar with an opening that could be kayaked through, taking us into the larger Indian Lake.

Although the kids had mostly done a good job of sharing the kayaks, having only two was definitely a limiting factor on their fun, especially when it came to crossing to the sandy, beachy area near the sandbar, which was great for swimming. The rental home also had a rowboat, which was much more spacious than the kayaks. John used the rowboat to ferry the kids out, demonstrating how to operate the oars.

Seeing their Papa row the boat gave the kids a false sense that rowing the rowboat was easy.

Having failed spectacularly to coordinate rowing with McKenna, Miles remained sure he could row the boat if he just rowed solo. He seemed to think that surely if Papa, who was born so far back in the 1900’s that there was still no such thing as zip codes or smiley faces at the time of his birth, could row the boat, a member of Generation Z was up to the task.

While it took some time and some zig-zagging, eventually we all made it to the sand bar.

While we were at the sandbar, Miles tried escape a return trip on the rowboat through a failed attempt to co-opt Drew’s kayak by claiming that he was just trying to get the kayak for Julia. Meanwhile, using Miles’ power play as a diversion, Julia teamed up with Drew and actually DID escape a return trip on the rowboat.

His kayak confiscation foiled, Miles was relegated to the rowboat bench.

It didn’t help Miles that Drew and Julia were, at that moment, demonstrating that the kayaks were so easy to maneuver that you could actually separate the paddle and haphazardly row while ALSO STANDING.

Eventually the kids did master the rowboat, but after the rowboat experience of this day, they were happy to spend the rest of the afternoon mastering less humiliating modes of transportation.

Back in the safety of the bug-free (as far as we knew) house, we set up for Diane’s birthday celebration. We had come in about a week after Diane’s actual birthday, but we would make up for our lateness with impromptu dancing and randomly placed balloons.

While Diane had brought home-made chocolate chip cookies, and another type of home-made cookie, and yet a third type of home-made cookie to the lake house, we added to this a dessert large enough for the “blowing out the birthday candles” part of the celebration. Diane prefers pie to cake, so we subbed in a cherry pie for the cake, discovering at the last minute that we didn’t actually remember to bring candles. There was another substitution made, this time of a flaming wooden skewer for the traditional candle.

The next day, having consumed roughly 78 helpings of dessert among the eleven of us during our stay, we decided to leave the lake house and get more dessert in the form of ice cream. About half a mile away, there was a general store that had an ice cream bar, but, in an unfortunate turn of events, that place was closed for an undisclosed family event. Disaster was averted when Jesse located an ice cream place in nearby Tawas City that was actually open. We hopped in our cars and transported the children, who had been without sugar for almost 45 minutes, to get some ice cream.

We retaliated for this lack of gratitude by making the kids take pictures at the harbor in Tawas City, WHILE LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN.

You know what also doesn’t like direct sun? Spiders.